She was up and out into the fields too early the following morning to dwell on how she and May would take their stockings along to their parents’ room and get into bed with them. Daddy always put a silly hat on, and he’d make a tinsel crown for Mummy, and sing them ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’ while they unwrapped the little parcels.
Occasionally during the day her mind slipped back to remembering the smell of the Christmas tree, the taste of sugar mice, or the sound of church bells and carols. But with the sun burning down on her as she drove the tractor, it was difficult to picture the frosty, foggy December nights back in England, seeing piles of tangerines in the greengrocer’s, and turkeys and chickens hanging up in the butcher’s shop window. Even if there was a slight sense of guilt that for the first time in her life she hadn’t attended Christmas Mass, surely gathering in the harvest which would help feed so many people was really a better thing to be doing?
Then finally it was finished, the paddocks left with only short stubble, the grain all gone down to the bulkhead, and Dulcie shared Bill’s jubilation.
‘They said I’d never grow cereals out here,’ he crowed, grinning from ear to ear. ‘They said I’d go bust like all the others that tried, but I knew it could be done. I knew it.’
Dulcie could understand his elation. Sergeant Collins had told her on one of his visits that this area had defeated farmers again and again, the soil was too salty, the rainfall too low. Even though thanks to the experimental station at Salmon Gums it had been proved that by putting superphosphate on to the soil it would improve conditions, few men who hadn’t been born and raised in this area were brave enough to risk breaking their backs clearing land and planting seed with no guarantee they would succeed where others had failed.
Many times during the harvesting Dulcie had found herself admiring Bill and his men. She might be appalled by their crudeness and lack of respect or understanding of women, but it took real men to take such vast areas of this arid, barren land, clear it and make crops grow. She felt they had every right to be pleased with themselves for it was a magnificent achievement.
Yet as she smiled at the men cavorting around like overexcited schoolboys and shared their joy, she glanced over at Pat, and the smile on her face froze. Pat was gazing at her husband with absolute hatred.
It not only chilled Dulcie but made no sense either. Bill might be hateful to Pat – in all the months she’d been here Dulcie had never heard him say a kind or tender word to her – but surely a good harvest meant security for both of them, in time a better home, and money in the bank? She wondered where the woman’s mind was.
Later that same night, she found out. The men wolfed down their evening meal and went straight off to the pub. As Dulcie washed up the dishes she heard a faint sound from the living-room and went in there to find Pat crying.
She was sitting at the desk, her head down on a bed of paperwork. She still had bits of straw in her lank, greasy hair and was wearing the same cotton trousers and man’s shirt she’d had on all week.
‘What is it?’ Dulcie asked, putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you feeling poorly? Why don’t you go and get into bed and I’ll make you some hot milk.’
‘It will take more than rest and hot milk to make me feel better,’ Pat sniffed. ‘You don’t know how hard I prayed for a storm, a bush fire, anything but to see that harvest gathered in.’
Dulcie was bewildered. She perched on the arm of the couch next to Pat. ‘I don’t understand. Surely a good harvest is good for you too,’ she said. The woman badly needed a bath, she stank to high heaven and her hair looked as though she hadn’t washed it for weeks. ‘Tell me why you didn’t want it, Pat, please.’
Pat sat up and looked at Dulcie. Her eyes were swollen and she looked pale despite her sun-burnt skin. ‘He’ll be unstoppable now,’ she said with a shrug. ‘He’ll get more and more land, borrow more and more money, and he’ll expect me to take the brunt of his bad temper when he’s worried. I won’t ever see a penny of anything he makes, but he’ll have me working every waking hour. What sort of life is that?’
Dulcie had learnt from Jake that as far as the hard work was concerned Pat was no different to any other farmer’s wife in the area, they all worked like dogs. Yet according to Jake, mostly they revelled in it, but of course they probably had husbands who treated them kindly.
‘It might not be that way.’ Dulcie thought Pat was being overly pessimistic. Bill might be a pig to her, but he wasn’t a fool. ‘Besides, if the harvest had failed you’d have been far worse off.’
Pat shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t, you see I had it planned. First I was going to say we couldn’t afford to keep you any more. He would’ve agreed with that immediately and I could have found you a job in a decent place down in Esperance. Then I was going to go too, go on back to Adelaide and get work as a housekeeper or something.’
Dulcie’s eyes widened with shock. ‘You were going to leave him?’
‘Surely you don’t imagine I love him?’ Pat snapped. ‘You’ve seen how he treats me. Could any woman love a man like that?’
Dulcie didn’t know what to say. Bad as Bill was, she’d got the idea Pat was totally resigned to it.
‘You’ll see why I have to leave him in the next few days,’ Pat said darkly. ‘He’ll go on a bender now, drinking till he’s got no cash left. He’ll come home and hit me when I’m not dazzled by all his wild plans. It’s going to be hell.’
Dulcie persuaded her to go and have a shower and wash her hair while she made her a drink. Then once Pat was in bed, she came and sat by her. She had no advice to offer her, part of her thought she was over-reacting because she was exhausted, she even thought that maybe if Pat showed a bit more enthusiasm towards Bill’s plans he might be nicer to her.
Yet she was touched that this woman with troubles enough of her own had wished to help her leave before she did. For that kind thought she was prepared to sit here all night if necessary.
‘I was working in a pub in Kalgoorlie when I met Bill,’ Pat said suddenly, her sun-tanned face very dark against the white pillow. ‘I was twenty-two and I’d already been to hell and back several times. He came into the pub one night and talking to him was like having a breath of fresh, sweet air. He’d just been demobbed from the army but he came from a farming background – when he spoke of it he brought back good memories from when I was just a little kid. He said he was after a place down this way, and some blokes in the pub took the rise out of him and said he’d be wasting his time and energy. But it was that energy about him I liked, Dulcie, I’d known too many dead-beats. He stayed in Kalgoorlie for about a week before he got a job on a farm around Norseman, and in that time he asked me to marry him. He said I was everything he wanted.’
Pat broke off then and began to cry again. ‘I might have known a man couldn’t want me in a romantic way, all my life until then every man I ever met used me, then walked away. But I thought Bill was different,’ she sobbed.
Dulcie stroked back her damp hair and wondered how anyone could imagine ape-like Bill to be a romantic hero – she knew nothing of men, but just one look at him had told her what he was.
‘Well, I married him and right off I saw what he meant by “I was everything he ever wanted”. A good cook, a slave, someone to kick about when he felt miserable. A woman who wouldn’t complain when he spent every spare hour with his mates. I was a dream to him, but it was a bloody nightmare for me. Once we got this place it got even worse. I’m a prisoner, Dulcie, I’m only thirty-one and I look forty. Unless I make a break for it soon, that’s my life for ever. All I can say is, thank God I never had a child by him.’
‘Go to sleep now, Pat,’ Dulcie urged her. ‘You might be wrong about him, he might be so happy now that everything will change. I’ll say my prayers for him and you tonight.’
Pat’s dark eyes opened wide and she jerked her head off the pillow. ‘Surely you don’t believe in any of that claptrap any longer?’
Dulcie hadn�
�t seen a priest or been anywhere near a church since she arrived here and she had no intention of ever doing so. She had turned her back quite firmly on all that ‘claptrap’ as Pat called it. But that was the Catholic Church, they’d lied and cheated her, she’d found what they did in the name of God was evil. But the God her granny had taught her to pray to was still there, she saw His handiwork every day out in the bush, felt His comforting presence all around her. She hadn’t quite given up on Him.
‘I still believe someone watches over us,’ she said softly. ‘I have to otherwise I’d just give up.’
But if God heard her prayers that night, he didn’t intervene on Pat’s behalf. Bill did come home drunk, vomited all over the kitchen floor, then forced his attentions on Pat in the most brutal manner. Dulcie lay quivering in her bed, listening to Bill’s crazed lust and Pat’s distressed whimpers, and promised herself she would never marry.
Pat was right in all her predictions. Bill kept up drinking both day and night for around a fortnight. Sometimes he didn’t come home at all, and when he did, he hit her. The other men joined him in his bender at first, but by the end of the first week they were back to work again without him. There was an uneasy atmosphere when they came in to eat, as if they felt uncomfortable being in the house while Bill wasn’t there. Yet all of them were nicer to Pat. Ted and Bert came in with wood they’d chopped for her, Jake often stacked up the dishes or took the chook-food pail from her hands and said he’d feed them. But then this time Bill had marked her face with his blows, and to see a woman with a half-closed eye was evidence of his cruelty to her, and perhaps they felt that Bill was going too far now.
Then suddenly Bill came back to work and took up the reins again, acting as if he’d just been away on a short holiday. Pat was right too about him wanting to get more land and new machinery – every evening over dinner he talked of little else.
Sometimes Pat would catch Dulcie’s eye and gave her an ‘I-told-you-so’ look. But she had sunk back into one of her morose moods again and made no further confidences.
Chapter Twelve
‘Where’s Pat?’ Bill asked as he came into the kitchen for supper. It was May, the lambing just over, and it was cold. Bill was scowling as usual and rubbing his dirty hands together to warm them.
‘Mucking out the pigs,’ Dulcie replied. Bill had bought three piglets back in January in the hopes they could breed from them. Pat had gone out a couple of hours ago, telling Dulcie to make the supper, and it was only now that Bill asked where she was that Dulcie noticed it was dark outside.
‘Those bloody pigs get better treatment than us,’ Ted said. ‘What’s for supper, Dulc?’
‘Lancashire hot-pot,’ Dulcie replied and half smiled at Ted’s face lighting up. She had found the recipe in a magazine and it had become one of the men’s favourite meals. The men sat down at the table and she put their plates of food in front of them.
Bill began to wolf down his, but stopped suddenly to look round at the window. ‘Get Pat in,’ he said sharply. ‘All I need now is for her to get bitten by a snake and have to drive down to the hospital.’
Dulcie went straight away, only stopping to put on a pair of Wellingtons and light a lantern. By day she never thought about snakes and hardly ever wore shoes outside, but it was different when she couldn’t see what was on the ground.
She called Sly and Prince to come with her as the pigs’ enclosure was on the far side of the barn. Many times in the past they’d barked a warning when there were snakes about, and their presence was comforting.
As she made her way over towards the pig sty, Dulcie was thinking about going to Esperance with Jake later in the week. Bill often let her go with Jake on his monthly trips into town, and during the summer months she’d been able to get to the beach while he collected spare parts for the machinery and provisions.
Dulcie thought sleepy little Esperance was heaven on earth. She loved the pine trees, the clear blue sea, the fishing boats and the little wooden-fronted shops. It wasn’t as stiflingly hot in summer as Salmon Gums, there was no bother from flies, and the residents and holidaymakers seemed so jolly and friendly. When she sat on the beach with an ice-cream, looking at the sea, she didn’t feel she’d been cheated by Australia, for it was like the pictures she’d seen all those years ago at the Sacred Heart. She was determined that when she was eighteen she would find a job here, and one day explore all along the coastline which Jake said was very rugged and beautiful.
‘Pat!’ she called, well before she got to the barn. ‘Supper’s ready.’
There was no reply, only a scuffle to her right. Sly barked, and Dulcie lifted the lantern to see a kangaroo just a few feet away from her. ‘Shoo,’ she said. She loved to see kangaroos, but not up close in the dark. Prince barked then and the kangaroo hopped away. Dulcie went on behind the barn.
Pat wasn’t at the sty, and it didn’t look or smell as if she’d mucked the pigs out. Mystified, Dulcie took the longer way back to the house, calling out her name. Just recently Pat had taken to going for a walk in the afternoons, she said it relaxed her, but she was always back well before the men came home.
Dulcie went back into the house. The men were just finishing their meal and they all looked up as she came in.
‘She’s not there,’ Dulcie said, feeling a little worried now.
‘What time did she go out?’ Bill asked.
‘About threeish. She said she was going to muck out the pigs, and for me to get the supper ready.’
‘It doesn’t take three hours to muck out three bloody pigs,’ Bill said curtly. ‘Anyone come by today?’
‘No,’ Dulcie said. ‘Well, I didn’t hear a truck or anything.’
Bill turned away from her and looked at the men. Suddenly they all looked concerned, not irritated as she would have expected.
‘Shall I go out looking?’ Jake asked.
Bill nodded. ‘Take the truck, call in at the Petersons as you pass and see if she’s there. I’ll go over the back on the tractor.’
Ted got up. ‘Bert and me will look over towards our place. She could’ve walked that way.’
Now that Dulcie saw they were worried, she became frightened.
‘What shall I do?’ she asked.
‘Stay here,’ Bill said. ‘I’ll leave Prince with you and take Sly.’
Dulcie sat down to eat her supper, but she had only taken a couple of mouthfuls when a thought struck her. Could Pat have chosen today to leave?
It seemed an absurd thought, for since that night when they finished the harvest last year, she hadn’t said anything at all to indicate she ever thought of it. Yet she had been even more morose than usual in the past few weeks.
Dulcie put her supper back into the oven and went into Pat and Bill’s room. Pat’s hairbrush and comb still sat on the top of the chest of drawers. Her nightdress was folded under the pillow where Dulcie had put it that morning too. Feeling a sense of relief, Dulcie was just about to turn round and return to the kitchen and her supper, when she felt compelled to check the wardrobe too.
At first glance nothing was missing. Pat’s best blue coat was still hanging there, and the usual four or five dresses, her two pairs of shoes, one with high heels, the other flat ordinary ones sitting beneath them. But then she remembered the two-piece navy blue costume Pat had bought in Esperance the last time they went there, and the new shoes. They were gone.
Pat had asked her not to mention them to the men. Dulcie hadn’t thought that was odd at the time, in fact it had prompted her to tell Pat that her mother used to buy new clothes and never admitted it to her father.
Returning to the kitchen, Dulcie found she no longer had any appetite for her supper and gave it to Prince. As she cleared the table and washed up, all she could think of was Pat. She had been in one of her silent moods this morning, and Dulcie remembered that when she went out to feed the chooks and the pigs, Pat had been sitting at the table with a cup of tea. When Dulcie returned half an hour later, Pat was still s
itting there, the tea cold in front of her. That was unusual – even in a sullen mood Pat never sat still for more than a few minutes. So she must’ve been brooding about something.
That navy costume and shoes were too smart to wear anywhere except in town – had she packed them in a small bag knowing that someone was coming by today who would give her a lift away from here?
The more Dulcie thought about it, the more certain she became that was what Pat had done. Without a suitcase and wearing her old work-clothes, a neighbour picking her up would think nothing of it if she said she needed something urgently from the shop, and that she’d wait there to get a lift back later.
The bus left at six for Kalgoorlie. Was she on it?
Part of her was glad for Pat, she even silently applauded her for finding the courage to go, yet she couldn’t help but be horrorstruck by what this would mean for her. Bill would be furious when he discovered the truth, he might even take it out on her. How could she possibly stay in this house alone at nights with him?
The more she dwelt on that, the more scared she became. Yet at the same time she knew she mustn’t tell Bill about the missing costume and shoes, or he might drive up to Kalgoorlie and catch Pat before she could get on the train to Adelaide.
As the evening progressed Dulcie became even more confused, for each time the men came back in they looked more and more worried, and their questions ever more frantic. For the first time in the year and a half she’d lived in this house she saw these men did actually care about Pat. Bill certainly deserved to lose her, yet Dulcie felt very sorry that it was only now when he believed she was hurt or in danger that he was able to show his feelings.
‘You should have gone out to look for her before it got dark,’ he said to Dulcie, running his hands through his hair. His dark eyes were deeply troubled, yet he didn’t sound as if he was blaming her, only himself for not coming home earlier. ‘She could’ve been bitten by a bloody snake. She’s so thin the poison would work twice as fast as it would in a man of my weight. But if she’s lying out around here somewhere I can’t understand why the dogs haven’t found her.’
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