Here it was again, the same thing Lloyd himself had suggested not so very long ago. She shook her head decisively. ‘I’m determined not to leave Australia. I’m afraid I’d never be allowed to return.’
But Mrs Jamieson didn’t know the full of it. There was one further barrier to the young people’s relationship she couldn’t possibly have guessed at. Louise had still to tell Lloyd who she really was.
How would he react to the revelation that she was Louise Ashford, daughter of a man who had ill-treated him with the typical arrogance of his class? Did he love her enough to accept her in spite of it, in spite of the deceit she’d practised on him? Oh, if only she’d been brave enough to tell him that day when he’d first kissed her. If he’d rejected her then she could have borne it.
~*~
After the New Year the dry spell was broken. It rained steadily for five days and the sun struggled with the clouds for another two. The rain had provided a brief respite from the heat but now the sun reappeared with renewed vigour, drawing vapour from the sodden ground in almost palpable waves. The children suffered with prickly heat and Louise found her corset and petticoats almost unbearable.
Just as the ground had dried enough to allow travel on horseback, the clouds opened once more in another deluge. They were all unused to being housebound and during a break in the weather Louise took the young Jamiesons to the river, anxious for any diversion to settle fraying tempers.
The Dawson’s peaceful clear waterholes were swallowed by brown, rushing water. The flood carried with it sticks and leaves and blobs of frothy scum which caught and settled against the straining branches of partly submerged tea-trees, trees that a fortnight before had stood tranquilly in the dry bed.
Andrew and Donald amused themselves by throwing sticks in the water. They watched the sticks drift with the current, arguing amongst themselves over the feasibility of swimming it. Louise had no intention of allowing them to find out.
‘You boys are just plain silly,’ Maggie told them.
‘Yes, you’d get drowned for sure,’ Annie chimed in, obviously relishing the chance to score one over her older brothers.
Mercy sat alone on a rock, looking quietly down at the water. Louise noticed her with a twinge of compassion. She had been very reserved since the weekend of the races. It was obvious her attachment to Lloyd was no swiftly passing thing. Yet he might never have returned it. Surely it was better for her to put it aside now than waste years in yearning for something that might not eventuate.
When they returned to the house, Lloyd was there, talking to Jock. If they had grown bored during the rain, it must have been doubly tedious for him, alone in that little shack. Not that the men folk were often idle during the wet season. There was always harness to repair, ropes and whips to plait, saddles to counter-line. And when a lull came in the weather, work began on yards and outbuildings, making repairs and additions. Yet labour could hardly compensate for human company.
Andrew suggested a game of whist. He and Mercy played against Lloyd and Louise at the big dining table, while Mrs Jamieson wrote a letter and Jock read from his bible. Annie, Agnes and Gertie played with cutout paper dolls, while Maurice elicited Donald’s help in fashioning a shanghai from a forked stick he’d cut with his pocket knife while at the river.
After Lloyd and Louise won the first two games, Lloyd suggested they change partners. He ended up partnering Mercy, but as partners sat opposite that meant Louise found herself sitting next to Lloyd. She wondered if that had been his intention, though perhaps not a wise one with Mercy’s intent gaze on them from the other side of the table.
It was bittersweet torment having him there, the brush of his arm against hers as he reached over the table for a card, and the freshly-washed smell of him mixed with the aroma of pipe tobacco in her nostrils. She watched his brown forearm, revealed by his rolled-up sleeve, as it rested on the table and his strong fingers as he plied his cards. The memory came to her, unbidden, of those fingers slipping under her chemise and she swiftly thrust it away.
Louise looked down at her cards, willing herself to concentrate. She played badly, but Lloyd did not. He was clever and quick with a good deal of daring. As he played yet another trump suit Louise wondered bitterly how he could be sufficiently indifferent to her to apply his mind to the game.
And then, when she was approaching despondency, his riding boot reached for her own shod foot under the table, entangling with it under her skirt. She trembled at his audacity, glancing quickly at his face. He continued to scan his cards as if nothing was happening, but at least she knew he was thinking of her after all.
~*~
With the final clearing of the clouds, the atmosphere lost some of its humidity, making the heat more tolerable. The land was now lushly green and fertile, with lagoons brimming full and tiny, fast-drying pools of water in every gully. Finally shedding the last remnants of their winter hair, the stock grew sleek and fat almost overnight. Now that the breeders were fit and strong Jock set about mustering them to brand the cleanskin calves. The sale bullocks would be allowed to continue fattening until May or June, although the cattle market had become very uncertain since the recent closure of the Lakes Creek Meatworks at Rockhampton.
The children were allowed a few days away from their lessons to help with some of the muster. And Louise, joy of joys, was able to accompany them, making Shadow, whom Lloyd had brought to Kilbride for her, earn his keep at last. Only little Gertie was forced to stay at home with her mother, much to her resentment. Although she could ably manage her fat little pony Jock considered the days too long for her.
There was an added bonus for Louise in being allowed to participate in the muster. It gave her the chance to see Lloyd, who was helping his neighbours. In return Mr Jamieson would take himself and his sons to Myvanwy in a few weeks’ time to help with the muster there. Such an arrangement appeared to favour Lloyd in terms of numbers, but the older man seemed perfectly satisfied with it and, after witnessing a day’s mustering, Louise understood why.
Mr Jamieson, who freely admitted his riding experience in his native Scotland had been limited to jogging bareback astride his father’s draft horses, was an unskilled rider and cattleman. And his sons clearly lacked the experience of their neighbour, who could gallop through a patch of scrub with his horse at the shoulder of a beast all the way. On one occasion Louise watched in breathless admiration as Lloyd threw a two-year-old micky with a quick flick of its tail. Before it could rise, he was off his horse and upon the winded animal, unbuckling a bull-strap from his waist.
Not only was Lloyd out riding with the Jamieson men during the day, but he was also sleeping and eating at their house, allowing Mrs Jamieson the opportunity to serve him some good, nourishing food. Louise was given no opportunity to be alone with him and she wasn’t shameless enough to seek it. She knew even a single kiss would have broken down the barriers and made it difficult to behave with the respect that was due to their hosts. So well did they play their parts that Mrs Jamieson stopped watching them, much to Louise’s relief. Sometimes it was hard to believe she and Lloyd had ever been involved in lustful, uninhibited lovemaking under a certain bottle tree in the main street of Banana.
Chapter Thirteen
One day in mid-February, Mrs Jamieson again called Louise to the study.
‘Now that the mustering is done, I’m going away for a few weeks to visit my sister in Rockhampton. I’m taking Maurice and Gertie with me but I’m confident about leaving the other girls in yours and Mercy’s care.’ She gave one of her rare smiles. ‘Maurice and Gertie haven’t been further than Banana so it will be a rare treat for them.’
Relieved that she wasn’t being subjected to another lecture, Louise tried to hide her surprise. ‘Of course, Mrs Jamieson. I’m sure we will manage splendidly. I hope you enjoy the vacation.’
The very next day, Mr Jamieson drove his wife and youngest children to Banana to catch the Westwood coach. Louise watched the departing wagonette w
ith a lightening of spirit. She would be practically her own mistress for the next few weeks, with Mr Jamieson not the sort to throw orders at her. Of course, she and Mercy would have to share her employer’s usual workload, but she was determined to uphold Mrs Jamieson’s faith in her.
During their mother’s absence Andrew and Donald between them began a weekly ritual of riding to Banana to collect the mail as it arrived on the coach from Westwood. When they returned, all the children would crowd eagerly around while their father read aloud the letter from their mother.
Louise tactfully absented herself on these occasions, until one day when her employer called her to join them.
Mr Jamieson’s face was ashen, his whole body slumped, the letter shaking in his hand. Mercy gripped the back of a chair with whitened knuckles, staring anxiously at her father, while her siblings looked at each other in dazed disbelief. Except for Maggie, who was the most sensitive of the four girls and who had already begun to cry.
‘What is it?’ Louise halted in the doorway, looking from one to the other while her heart beat a swift tattoo against her ribs. ‘What has happened?’
‘Maurice has contracted the diphtheria,’ Mr Jamieson croaked, the Scottish accent more than usually pronounced. ‘They don’t hold out much hope for the lad.’ He pushed the letter blindly under a china ornament on the corner whatnot, averting his grief-stricken features. He left the room hastily, leaving the others to stand there in a silence relieved only by Maggie’s sobbing.
Diphtheria! Louise knew enough about the disease to appreciate that it was usually fatal. A membrane formed at the back of the throat, obstructing the windpipe and often leading to suffocation. If not the victim was likely to die of other complications. It was a highly infectious disease and Louise remembered an epidemic when she was a child. Isolated at Banyandah from their peers, the Ashford children had escaped the illness, but she knew of others who had died.
With Mercy’s assistance she consulted Mrs Jamieson’s medical book. Following its instructions, she fetched a shovelful of hot coals from the stove and sprinkled sulphur over them before carrying it from room to room. The fumes were supposed to act as a disinfectant. It seemed certain that Maurice had contracted the disease in Rockhampton, but she took comfort in doing something positive. That was the worst of it for everyone; feeling so helpless, with nothing to do but wait for further news.
The week passed in a fever of anxiety. When the mail coach was due to arrive, Mr Jamieson saddled up and rode into Banana himself. He returned looking grey and defeated, his hands trembling as he fingered a crumpled envelope.
‘Maurice seems to be pulling through,’ he told them heavily, ‘but Gertie took sick the day after Mother last wrote.’ He looked at them all as if searching for a way to break it to them gently. ‘She died on Tuesday.’
~*~
After those first moments of dazed shock they all went through the motions of normality, milking the house cows, feeding the fowls, sweeping, dusting, washing and cooking. Yet all the tasks were done in a sort of haze and afterwards Louise could hardly remember actually doing them. It was difficult to absorb the fact that poor Gertie would never be returning from that special treat, a visit to the coast.
Louise was forced to adopt the role of surrogate mother, comforting the girls when they broke down in tears. The family’s grief distressed her and since it was her first immediate experience of death, she struggled with her own reactions to it. It was hard to believe the small, warm body that had curled up to her at story time now lay lifeless in a cold grave, the happy, affectionate spirit forever quenched. Death was appalling at the best of times, but obscene when it involved a child.
Andrew rode to Myvanwy with the sad news and returned accompanied by Lloyd, who looked pale and shaken. Louise remembered how he’d carried Gertie home on his shoulder after they had searched for emu eggs and suspected he was feeling the shock as keenly as she.
‘I’ll help the boys keep an eye on things if you want to go to Rockhampton, Jock,’ he offered.
But Mr Jamieson shook his head. ‘I don’t want to risk carrying the infection back here. I think it’s best if I stay where I am, lad. Harriet’s got her sister and brother-in-law to look to. I dare say she won’t be coming home for a while now.’
The following week they received better news. Maurice was recovering, though very slowly. According to the doctor his heart was weakened, but if he took care not to over-exert himself he should be able to lead a normal life.
‘A normal life,’ Mr Jamieson exclaimed angrily. ‘What sort of normal life is it for a boy who can no’ exert himself? That does away with living in the bush. He’ll have to set his sights on a desk job in the town. He’ll no’ think too highly of that. And how do ye tell a lad like Maurice to take it steady?’
No-one had an answer for him.
Mrs Jamieson intended to remain in Rockhampton with Maurice while he convalesced. They would not be able to return home until there was no danger of infecting the other members of the family and the boy had the attentions of a doctor there. Louise could only guess what a difficult time it must be for Mrs Jamieson, having to endure sickness and the death of her youngest child. On top of that, there was the enforced separation from the husband whose comfort she must be longing for.
~*~
Louise was no longer the decorative but functionless young society lady of her days at Banyandah. In the past twelve months she’d become a children’s governess and had briefly experienced the life of a drover. Now she found herself having to neglect the girls’ lessons at times as she lent Mercy a hand with the cooking and housekeeping.
The task of cooking for ten people, including the stockman Ernie Bates and the Aboriginal maid, was a big responsibility for someone of Mercy’s age and inexperience. So Louise found herself suffering the sweltering heat of the wood stove, learning to tell when the corned beef was done, or keeping an eye on the leg of mutton that was roasting in the oven. She followed Mercy’s directions on the making of blancmanges and rice puddings and put jellies to set in a safe hung with cooling wet hessian.
She also supervised Elsie, the dark housemaid, wielding a broom or a duster herself on occasion. On washday she helped Elsie lift clothes with an old broom handle from the steaming copper, leaving them to drain in a slatted wooden box before rinsing and pegging on the line. If there was nothing else to claim her attention she helped the younger girls in Mrs Jamieson’s vegetable garden. Louise supposed her mother would be horrified to see her with dirt on her hands, ingrained under her chipped fingernails, but that old life when such things had mattered seemed remote. This was her life now; this was the sort of life she would be leading if she married Lloyd.
No wonder Mrs Jamieson had seemed busy. Louise had never really understood before the extent of her duties. How great a contrast was her life to that of Mrs Ashford, who now was no doubt living an ever more indulgent lifestyle at Fenham Manor. Yet only when Louise was at her most exhausted, when the day had been insufferably hot and the children had been quarrelling, did she ever think wistfully of having nothing to do.
~*~
One day Lloyd rode over to see Jock. An Aboriginal stockman from Bauhinia Downs had carried a message to him, informing him they had a number of cattle from Myvanwy and Kilbride at one of their mustering camps. Because it was such a large station, the stockmen at Bauhinia Downs held the cattle from outlying areas in an open camp to brand and draft instead of bringing them all to the homestead stockyards. After the calves were branded, the fat bullocks and any other stock that were to be separated from the main herd were drafted out of the main mob on horseback.
Jock and Lloyd set off together at daylight the next morning to collect their cattle, light swags strapped to the cantles of their saddles. They rode briskly and came onto the now brimming waterhole in Roundstone Creek in two hours. Here Lloyd was surprised to find that the tribe of AAborigines, who’d been camping here when he came through with Louise in October, had departed.
‘They must’ve gone walkabout,’ he commented to Jock. ‘They were still here before the Wet. Or perhaps they’ve shifted for good. The fleas might’ve got a bit thick for ‘em.’
‘Aye. Or it might be just that their gunyahs were falling down on top o’ them and they thought it simpler to build a new lot elsewhere.’ Jock eyed the flimsy structures critically. ‘If we get another good storm there’ll be nowt left of this lot.’
They watered their horses and continued on their way. Some three miles distant Lloyd suddenly drew rein in the midst of a thicket of brigalow. He held up his hand for silence as Jock began to speak. ‘Listen!’
‘Sounds like a beast bellowing.’ The noise was more distinct now and they looked at each other, startled.
‘What the buggery...?’ Lloyd muttered. For it wasn’t a cow calling her calf, or a lone beast merely separated from its mates, or even a bull on the rampage. The bellows were those of a grown beast and they carried the unmistakable gutwrenching tones of extreme pain or fear.
Lloyd shoved the spurs into his horse’s belly and set off at a controlled gallop through the scrub, Jock following more cautiously at the rear of his crashing progress. Lloyd checked Dynamite momentarily at the edge of a slight clearing. Ahead of them, partially obscured by the leathery grey leaves of the brigalow, was a group of Aboriginal huntsmen. Some of the men stood back with spears poised while their companions stabbed ruthlessly at the unfortunate animal kicking and writhing at their feet. Its tortured bellows were a thousand times more dreadful than those of the most strident calf at branding.
Lloyd swore and set his horse towards the natives at a wild gallop. Behind him Jock gave voice to a less obscene profanity, in temper riding as recklessly as Lloyd. The Aborigines, normally so acute of hearing, were deafened by the cries of their prey. At the last minute they turned to the sight of two yelling, furious horsemen threatening to trample them. They scattered in terror, some of them even dropping their weapons in their haste. One man, however, younger and more impetuous than the rest, paused long enough to obey an instinctive, panic-stricken impulse.
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