by Fiona Kidman
His wife was waiting, solicitous as ever, ready to take his coat. But she frowned at this display of intemperance. Their house was an orderly one, discreetly furnished and neutral, a cool haven with the blinds half-drawn to keep out the bright sunlight, a house where guests and students alike were greeted with fresh lemonade and soothing words. They had arranged the layout so that the hall opened into their huge music room, where the grand piano stood on its raised platform. Frederick’s music students were considered the most polished and well-rehearsed in Perth. Indeed, the best in every respect because the professor accepted only those with natural talent. A student had to pass several tests in order to become his disciple.
‘Mail from New Zealand,’ his wife said, picking up the envelope from the hall table.
His heart bounced in his chest when he saw the beautiful copperplate handwriting with a slight curl at the end of some letters, perfect in themselves, each word a tiny work of art. He had seen that distinctive handwriting before, the last time perhaps a quarter of a century ago. That envelope had contained an entreaty from a woman, a plea that she be allowed to come to him. The girl, rather, for that is what she was then, little more than a child, had just turned sixteen. Yet she was old enough to marry.
‘It contains something else besides a letter.’ His wife said. ‘An object, a quill perhaps,’
‘Hmm,’ was all he said. He took the letter, making as if to move to the piano room.
‘So, aren’t you going to open it?’
‘Some childish thing from my brother’s boys, no doubt. They’re always drawing and doodling, you know how it is.’
‘Little Rex must be four or five now.’
‘I suppose so. Are you going to get me something cold to drink or must I do it for myself?’
‘I’ll get it,’ she said, offended. As she withdrew from the room, he slipped the letter into his pocket and walked through the music room into his study. When he rejoined his wife, his expression was carefully arranged.
‘So, the letter?’ she asked, placing a tray beside him.
‘As I said, just a drawing.’
‘It felt more than that.’
‘The children have been collecting odds and ends.’
‘Their mother has a neat hand. I didn’t remember it so elegant.’
‘Really,’ he said, his voice sharper than he intended. ‘Really.’
‘It’s a pity your family’s so far away,’ she remarked after a silence. ‘It would be nice if the children could meet their cousins.’
‘You’d hate the journey,’ he said. ‘It’s a mighty rough crossing to New Zealand. Wait until there’s a railway across the desert.’
‘I can’t see that happening in my lifetime,’ she said.
‘They’re talking of sending the line further on past Kalgoorlie.’ The next day he would be making his annual trip to the gold-rush town, where he would listen to a recital by embarrassed adolescents and choose one of them to study in Perth. Despite his intention to be composed, he heard himself burbling on to his calm auburn-haired wife about the journey to come, about the train that would bear him towards the flaming heart of Australia. His wife merely smiled. He admired her restraint. For the most part, he had grown like her, not the impetuous, half-mad youth who had landed at Fremantle with little more than the ability to read a music score and a packet of pound notes, which his grandfather had slipped him on the sly.
And now, in the dimmed shadows of his home with the heat rising outside, he saw the girl again. ‘I’m going for a walk,’ he said.
His wife looked at him strangely.
The landscape in which Frederick Fairburn met Esther Gittos was so distant and different that he found it hard to conjure now. The Kaipara Harbour on the western flank of the North Island lay beside a countryside of muted greens and blues, forests lying thick between the many rivers that led to the sea, a wilderness of ash-green mangroves at its edge, their tangled roots emerging from the water, causing the tides to have a still, almost indolent appearance on summer days. When it rained, drops fell like stones skipping the surface of the water. It was a day after rain when the Reverend William Gittos, of the Methodist persuasion, discovered the young man alone in a tent in the bush beside a rough track wide enough to take a bullock dray but not much more. It was hard to know who was the more startled when he lifted the tent flap and saw Frederick reclining on a hammock. The minister was a solemn-looking man with a bushy beard, slightly stained at its tips.
‘I’m with the surveyors’ team,’ Frederick explained.
‘Ah, the Great North Road, well, that’s certainly needed. It would make my life easier, I’ll tell you that.’ So they came to explaining one another’s presence, the minister telling of the way he travelled by foot around his Māori parish, which stretched to the far reaches of the Kaipara, and the weeks and months he spent away from home performing the Lord’s errands, while Frederick related that he was the son of the chief surveyor, but today he had a slight cold, and his father had told him to rest. His tone betrayed a lack of enthusiasm.
‘Aren’t you happy in your work?’ Gittos asked.
Frederick shrugged by way of answer.
‘Or perhaps he’s not happy with your approach?’
‘My father thought it fitting that I followed in his steps.’
‘And now he doesn’t?’
‘I’ve trained in music. I’ve been fortunate enough to travel widely in Europe with my grandfather. I studied at the conservatoire in Milan.’
‘So now your father is a disappointed man?’
‘He thinks music an infatuation rather than a career.’ The minister allowed himself the glimmer of a smile. ‘We’ve come to an understanding,’ Frederick continued. ‘Six months in the bush, and if we’re not satisfied with each other then I’ll seek work in Auckland.’
‘A good meal would set you up. Leave a note for your father and tell him you’re with me. He’ll know who I am.’
This was the way Frederick came upon the Gittos family. The rain had cleared, and the air was fresh and fine. The mission station was not far from the sea, small waves curdling along the shoreline. He saw a large house built of sturdy timber with several wide verandahs. A garden surrounded the house, and beyond stood an orchard where peaches and figs were ripening and a flock of ducks roamed. And, there, at the heart of the establishment, was Marianne Gittos and her daughters, of whom there were several. The young women and their mother were intent upon building small wooden frames. As they approached the group, Frederick was struck by a humming sound, and he saw that alongside them stood a row of hives and that the singing note was that of the bees.
‘This is Mister Fairburn,’ the minister announced.
The mother was holding up one of the frames and inspecting its workmanship.
‘How do you do? Who did you say, William?’ She put her free hand behind one ear.
‘I’m afraid my wife is afflicted by deafness,’ Gittos said.
One of the daughters leaned over and put her mouth close to her mother’s ear. She appeared the youngest. As she shaped the words, her mouth, Frederick observed, was supple and soft and the colour of ripening raspberries.
‘Thank you, Esther,’ said her father. ‘Mister Fairburn will be staying for dinner. You could ask your mother if she will squeeze the neck of a chicken. Or a duck, perhaps, given that Mister Fairburn’s father is planning to make a road for us.’
Marianne’s shoulders seemed to droop for a moment, as if she had more demands on her for food than she could possibly meet. She turned back towards the beehives and, taking up a feather, moved some bees this way and that before closing the hives. At this, her husband moved back a step or two, appearing surprisingly nervous for a man otherwise so certain of himself, shifting from one foot to another.
‘My mother has great skill with bees,’ said Esther. ‘She’s making frames for them to set their honey. It’s a new innovation. She hopes to sell honey to the people in Auckland.’ She held up t
he frame and smiled at him through it.
Frederick felt his heart bounce in his chest.
When he thinks back to that day, that is how he will see the Gittos family, as if in a small picture frame, standing there in relief, the mother and father, their five daughters and two sons as well, though it wasn’t until later that evening when they were gathered by the piano that he would meet the young men.
When William Gittos suggested that he might play something for them, given that he was of a musical bent, he sat down at their piano and began playing a light Strauss waltz. When he saw some puzzled frowns, he quickly changed to hymns, ending with ‘Onward Christian Soldiers’, which at the time was quite new. Their voices soared then.
It was Esther, of course, with whom he had fallen in love. She wore her dark hair pulled back from her high forehead and pinned up, although some of it escaped in curly fronds. Her eyes were set wide apart, her cheekbones high. He could tell that she couldn’t take her eyes off his face, and he was careful not to return her gaze, in part so that she would try even harder to make his acquaintance though also so that nobody would think ill of him for too frankly observing her beauty.
Night had fallen, and it was agreed that on no account should he try to make his way back through the bush to the survey camp. In the morning, he rose early and went to the kitchen. Already some of the family had risen and were going about their tasks. Across a paddock he could see one of the girls milking a cow. Mrs Gittos was inspecting her beehives. Behind him, Esther spoke.
‘My mother’s always checking on the hives. My father’s terrified of the bees.’ She laughed, expecting him to see the joke.
‘Do any of you get stung?’
‘Only my father. Oh, I can tell you, it’s very funny. It keeps him in order.’
‘How old are you, Esther?’ he said, his voice urgent.
‘I’ll be sixteen in three months. And you?’
‘Twenty-one.’
‘Oh, that’s perfect.’
‘Why perfect?’
She bit her rosy lip and blushed. ‘Oh, I don’t know. It just seems the right age for a man.’
‘On Sunday, I’ll be free to visit again. Would you like that?’
She frowned at this. ‘But I wouldn’t be able to spend time with you on Sunday. It’s church, you see, and they would notice if I were missing.’
Frederick took a deep breath. ‘You’d meet me alone?’ Could it be that Esther was willing to take leaps that he hadn’t considered possible? They were standing close to each other.
For a moment, she seemed to hang her head, but when she looked up her eyes were clear and steady. ‘You’ve seen my sisters. None of them have beaus. Nobody dares look at a Gittos girl.’ She hesitated, as if waiting for him to take the warning or not, before opening her hands, palms upwards. ‘I would like to get to know you, more than anything in the world.’
Frederick closed his eyes, dizzy with her scent. Wild honey, he thought.
In the weeks that followed, as the peaches continued to ripen and the figs darkened and the drowsy bees lumbered in the orchard, they met on Saturday afternoons at half-past two on the dot. It was the earliest his father would release him and the latest part of the day she could take herself off for a walk before the round of chores that occupied the family drew in. It became their time, the half-past two moment. He kissed her on the lips time and again, at first with their mouths pressed shut together, and then on an inward breath, finding themselves in a deeper kind of intimacy that left them both shaken. When he felt her yielding to him in his arms, he had to stop and remind himself that she was still a child, although the urgency of his need was intolerable.
‘Essie, I must tell your father that we’re planning to get married.’
‘He’ll say I’m too young.’
‘All the same, it won’t be long before you’re not too young. It’ll soon be your birthday.’
She was lying on her stomach on the grass. He picked up the hem of her dress and turned it up above her knees. She lay still, stifling her giggles.
‘Hush,’ he said, ‘they’ll hear you.’ For they were very quiet on these assignations, keeping their voices almost to whispers.
‘There’s only my mother here, and you know she can’t hear a thing.’
A mottled feather from the duck pen had drifted to the ground nearby. He picked it up and began to stroke the back of her knee with its tip. ‘Little bee,’ he said.
At which moment, the voice of wrath, the end of his world, his own private doomsday, fell about him. William Gittos and his wife Marianne stood in the orchard, their faces white, William’s eyes blazing.
‘I may not be able to hear, but I can see,’ Marianne said. ‘And I can smell an infidel in my presence.’
‘You will leave my property,’ William said, ‘before I kill you.’
‘Sir, I was going to tell you,’ Frederick stammered, ‘I wish to marry your daughter. I am prepared to wait until she is of age. Her honour is mine too.’
‘Leave now,’ the missionary said. ‘I have friends here who will help me tear you limb from limb. If you return, you’ll be horse-whipped.’ His wife nodded, her lips pulled tight.
When he reflected in years to come, he knew he should have understood how well the Gittos family kept its word. Months later, he answered Esther’s letter in person, a letter reminding him that her birthday had been and gone, imploring him to come and rescue her from her family. The oldest of the five sisters opened the door to him. The moment she saw who it was, she screamed. Esther was nowhere to be seen. The sister slammed the door shut.
‘Esther,’ he shouted and banged the door again. This time the door flew open and Marianne appeared, a riding crop in her hand, seizing his jacket and pulling him inside in one swift hard motion, strong as any man. Then three more of the girls burst in on the scene, all wielding whips, all shouting and screaming. Not a sign of Esther. One of them shouted that Sarah had gone to fetch the law, and all this while they were beating him, the sting of their switches like that of a whole swarm of bees, while he shouted back at them, telling them to stop and he would leave, but they wouldn’t. Blood ran down his face and his head felt split open. He looked up from his tormentors and saw Esther standing in the doorway, the back of her hand held to her mouth, her eyes enormous. It is her eyes he will remember, burning like fever.
‘Essie,’ he cried, leaping to his feet. Summoning all his strength, he tore Marianne’s whip from her hands, turning and raising it above her head. She bared her teeth, waiting for the blow.
Esther was walking towards him, her face mask-like, as if in a trance, her hand held out. ‘Give me the whip, Frederick,’ she said. Her sisters had stilled around them.
‘I’ve come to get you, Essie.’
‘Don’t hit her. Don’t hit my mother,’ she said, as if he hadn’t spoken.
‘Essie,’ he said. ‘Essie.’ He let the whip fall to his side.
‘Father said you were already engaged to another girl.’
‘Lies,’ he said. ‘That’s a lie. I don’t know another girl.’
‘Give me the whip,’ she said again, and he gave it to her. She handed it to her mother. Seeing that Marianne was about to strike him again, and the sisters were raising their arms again too, he ran straight through a pane of glass, out into the garden, staggering amongst the wallflowers. But men barred his way, proclaiming themselves justices of the peace.
‘My God,’ he shouted, ‘this is a houseful of fiends.’ The men arrested him then, and he woke up hours later in the Port Albert prison, a rough place from where there was no escape.
There was more before it was over. More jail and court appearances, and a charge laid for ‘being on the premises of the Reverend William Gittos for an unlawful purpose’. The errands of the Lord seemed endless for the minister, who hurried about the court, conferring in grave tones with the men who sat on the bench.
Had Esther written the letter asking him to come for her before or after th
e lie was told? Nobody could tell him. Or, if they knew, they wouldn’t.
An Auckland judge set Frederick free, dismissing the charge. He had shaken his head at the folly of it all. A waste of the court’s time. There was no case for Mr Fairburn to answer.
Nonetheless, his family didn’t care for a scandal in its midst.
So much for love. He married a rich woman soon after he arrived in Australia. She had made him content enough. When Frederick thought of Esther, he thought that too much happiness was bad for a man.
He stood on the viewing platform at the end of the overnight sleeper taking him to Kalgoorlie. The wide, wild, passionate sky was that bright crimson that heralded dusk in the outback, a colour he loved, reminding him he was still alive. Inside the carriage, men heading for the goldfields were drinking whisky and singing. Later, he would join them, singing along to their bawdy songs. Why not? But as the train swayed and rattled, he stood with his hand in his pocket. He held the envelope against his thigh for just a moment longer before drawing it out. He had read the contents. Just a newspaper clipping, announcing the death of Mrs Gittos. And a dark feather. He drew it across his wrist. He understood that the daughter was sending him a signal. He imagined her alone, her parents dead, her brothers and sisters married. She would be nearly forty now.
He closed his eyes. The sky’s dark petals of light hovered behind his lids. The train wheels drummed. As the dusk deepened, he felt a sting of cold on his cheeks. He imagined he caught the scent of honey. He let the clipping go first. Then the feather, floating into the darkness. All the sadness in the world. And yet this, this little shaft of memory, sent to him from a far distance.
Mrs Dixon & Friend
Bethany was waiting for him on the side of the street. The unexpectedness of it took Peter’s breath away. He was used to her being late, but here she was, bright-eyed and early, swinging her handbag backwards and forwards with cheerful disingenuousness, like a girl who knows that if she waits long enough her man will turn up. How right she was, even if he was only her man for a day.