Washerwoman's Dream

by Hilarie Lindsay

  * * *

  On the day after Mr McNab’s visit Winifred’s father sent her to collect the meat they had been promised and to ask Mr McNab to post the letter to his sister when next he went to town. Winifred went the long way by the road, walking in the middle, fearful of snakes and other creatures she did not yet know about. Once she almost stepped on a huge goanna basking in the sun on the hot road. It reared up at her and she saw two rows of sharp teeth, a long tongue and a throat the colour of blood. She stood still, sick with fear, until it ran up a gum tree.

  She would have liked to turn around and go back to her father, but she knew she couldn’t. Except for Mrs McNab’s scones, they’d eaten nothing but damper and treacle washed down with black tea since they arrived. ‘We can’t live on that forever,’ her father had said. ‘We need meat or we’ll starve.’

  When she finally reached her destination she was greeted by the sight of a dozen or so chooks pecking around a two-roomed slab hut and a mean-looking tan dog which began to bark loudly, straining at its leash as if it would like to rip her limb from limb. She hung back, afraid to walk past, until Mrs McNab poked her head out of a lean-to attached to the side of the house. Wiping her hands on her apron she called, ‘Come in. Come in. Ye must be the Oaten girl. Sit ye down, lassie.’ She picked up a black and white cat that was lying on a bench by the fireplace and shooed it out into the yard. ‘She’s afeared of the dog. We got her to keep the rats outa the henhouse. But I think she’s afeared o’ them too. Some of ’em are almost as big as her’n. When she gits her kittens I’ll gie you one — that’s if yer Pa’ll let ya. Sit ye down. Would ye like a drink o’ tea? The kettle’s on the boil.’

  The child shook her head. ‘I’d like a drink of water, please.’ Then she remembered the letter and took it out of her pocket and put it on the table. ‘My father said to ask if Mr McNab could post this when he goes to town next.’

  ‘I’ll gie it to my husband.’ Mrs McNab put it on the mantelpiece and lifted a tin mug off a nail on the wall, filling it with water from an empty kerosene tin that had a length of wire through it to make a handle. ‘This is good water,’ she said as she offered Winifred the mug. ‘When the creek floods ye never know what ye’ll find.’

  Winifred took the proffered mug and sipped the water. She was thirsty after the long hot walk, and hungry.

  ‘I’m sorry I can’t offer you a girdle cake or a slice of bread … the flourbag’s empty. Until McNab gets back from the shop there won’t be none. I only got some cold meat and potatoes, and that’s for the boys when they come in from the paddock.’

  Winifred looked around the kitchen. There was an open fireplace with a spit for roasting meat; two enormous black-iron pots and a black-bottomed frying pan hung on nails by the chimney, alongside a collection of tin mugs. The kettle was steaming away on the fire. ‘I like to keep the kettle boiling. It’s like another person in the house. Sometimes we have long conversations. Ye know what I miss most? It’s the sound of a woman’s voice. When’s your Ma coming?’

  ‘I don’t have a mother,’ Winifred said.

  ‘Oh, you poor wee bairn. What did she die of?’

  Winifred was about to say that her mother had drowned, until she remembered her father. If he found out she had told Mrs McNab that, he would beat her. She wasn’t even supposed to mention her mother’s name. Instead she said, ‘I don’t know.’

  ‘My Ma died having a bairn. I was only ten and in service in a great house. I worked as a scullery maid. Never saw my ain folk once I started work there until the day the cook told me I was wanted at home. When I got there I found my Ma had died and the wee babe too. There were four bairns younger than me. I had to stay home to look after ’em.

  ‘I don’t know why the Lord made life so hard to women. You either die givin’ birth, or the bairn does. If it lives, you end up beside yerself with work. McNab don’t understand. He says havin’ babies comes natural and animals does it all the time. But the cow don’t have to git out o’ bed afore she feels like it after she’s had her calf an’ wash clothes an’ scrub floors an’ mend and make do until she’s fair wore out. Then he expects me to feed the chickens, milk the cow when the lads is busy, and carry his tea down to the far paddock when it’s boiling in the shade.’ She wiped the sweat from her forehead with her apron. ‘I niver could take the heat.’

  Winifred wanted to ask her for another drink of water. The sun was blazing down on the tin roof and the kettle was still steaming on the stove. The room was stifling, but she didn’t like to interrupt.

  ‘Where I grew up there was always a breeze off the loch and snow on the mountains in winter. Aye, it was bonny. And there was always fresh-caught salmon on the laird’s table. The cook’d scrape little bits off the underneath and gie me a wee taste on a slice of bread. Here I’m lucky to hae bread to put in my bairns’ mouths. The elders of the kirk fixed up for me to marry McNab when me father was put off his land. My wee brothers and sister went to a foundling home. I cried the day they were took … They clung to my skirt screaming. I never seen sight nor sound of ’em since.’

  Her voice broke and Winifred watched as a tear ran down her cheek. The woman wiped it off with the back of her hand. ‘The elders said McNab was a good man and would take care o’ me. He was coming to Queensland where they were gieing away land. He needed a wife and my father gave his permission even though … even though I was barely fifteen. But McNab dinna love me. Nay, he dinna love me, lassie. A body needs that.’ She put her apron to her face and a sob escaped her. Then she gave Winifred a half-smile and blew her nose on her apron.

  ‘Aye, it’s been a struggle. Things weren’t how I thought they’d be … McNab’s a good man. I can’t deny it, but sometimes a body needs more.’

  Winifred fidgeted uneasily. She felt sorry for Mrs McNab but she was a grown-up. She knew they had troubles — she’d listened to Mrs Watkins often enough — but she had worries of her own. She wasn’t sure of the time. It wasn’t like England where there was a long twilight. If it was late she would have to find her way home in the dark, and there was still water to fetch from the creek. She wondered how much longer Mrs McNab would go on talking. She put the tin mug down and stood up. ‘Can I have the meat please? I have to get home.’ She took a scrap of cloth out of her apron pocket, undid the knot and put threepence on the table.

  ‘It’s hanging in the meat room. I’ll get it.’

  Winifred followed her across the yard to a small wooden shed roofed with iron where the bloodied fleece of a sheep was spread out to dry. She caught her breath at the rank smell and winced at the sight of a solid mass of flies clustered on the skin. Inside the shed she saw the carcase of a sheep wrapped in a hessian bag hanging from a hook. Mrs McNab banged the bag with a stick and an evil-looking cloud of black flies rose in the air. Then she opened the bag and lifted a sheep’s head from the bottom. She put it in an empty flourbag that had been lying on the dirt floor and handed it to Winifred. Some of the flies settled on the bag, while the rest clustered back on the outside of the carcase once Mrs McNab had rewrapped it.

  ‘Be sure to hang what’s left o’ the meat in the shade and rub plenty of salt into it so that it won’t go bad. When you’ve ate it you can bring back the bag. Wash it in the creek first.’

  She led Winifred out of the shed. ‘You’d best gang along afore it gits dark. Come and visit again.’ She put her arms around the girl and kissed her on the cheek. ‘It’s done my poor heart good to talk to you.’

  Just before Winifred turned to leave, the woman darted back inside the shed and came out with a brown onion in her hand. ‘I’ll gie ye this, lassie. You can boil up what left o’ the head and make a bit of broth.’

  The heat had gone out of the day as Winifred started the long walk back along the road, carrying the bag of meat, the onion safely in her apron pocket. She shooed the flies that followed her with a piece of stick she picked up off the ground. The sheep’s head felt heavy and she had a sickening vision of its eyes staring
at her and the bloodied neck with bones showing through where it had been hacked off.

  The long walk, and having to listen to Mrs McNab, plus her worry about finding her way home again had left her feeling inexpressibly tired. After only a short while she yearned to stop and sit by the road to rest, but she remembered the creature she had almost trodden on because it was the same colour as the dirt. She was terrified it might still be there.

  Further along the road she heard a scuffling noise and saw the goanna, looking more like a dragon than ever, pattering towards her in a cloud of dust. She fancied it was chasing her and she began to run, wondering if it was her or the sheep’s head it was after. She thought about throwing the meat away but knew that her father would be angry. Instead, clutching the bag to her chest, she began to run faster, her breath coming in laboured gasps, with a stitch in her side until she could hardly breathe. When she finally stopped and looked back, the creature had disappeared.

  The night was closing in, and though she was glad of the cooler air she felt worried because she had no idea how much further she had to go. As the sun set she knew she had no hope of finding her way and tears began to run down her cheeks, though she still plodded on, slower now, afraid of the dark ahead and the dark behind.

  Then she heard her father’s voice calling out, ‘Winifred, Winifred,’ and saw a wavering light coming towards her. She ran forward and threw herself sobbing into his arms. Her father took the bag and, holding the candle in his other hand, led her to their clearing by the road.

  ‘What kept you, child? You should have been home long ago.’

  ‘It was Mrs McNab. She wouldn’t stop talking. And I’ve had nothing to eat. And a thing like a dragon chased me.’

  ‘I should never have let you go alone,’ he said as he put his arm around her and held her. ‘You’re safe now. We’ll have a good feed. I’ll grill a chop once the fire has burned down.’ He struck a match and the dry kindling the girl had gathered that morning sprang into life. Then he opened the flourbag and lifted out the bloodied head with its staring eyes, holding it at arm’s length. ‘I mighta known … a bloody Scotsman. Mean as a pikestaff.’

  ‘Mrs McNab said to rub it with salt and hang it on a tree so that it doesn’t go bad.’ Winifred took the onion out of her pocket. ‘And she gave me this to make some soup.’

  ‘It’ll do for tomorrow. I’ll put it in the billy can and boil it up once we’ve had our tea.’

  He mixed some flour and water in a basin. ‘I’ll make a damper. There’s some treacle left in the tin.’

  Later, as they were eating their meal, Winifred said, ‘Mrs McNab asked me when my mother was coming.’

  ‘Interfering busybody. We don’t want the likes of her prying into our business. You keep away from her.’

  * * *

  If Wilfred’s heart failed him when he considered what he had got himself into, he refused to admit it. He had sunk all his savings into the venture and there was no turning back. He was not the sort of man to return to England with his tail between his legs. No matter what happened, he would never admit defeat, not even to himself, and least of all to Louisa.

  The first task he had set himself was to clear the ground for a shanty, slashing at the walls of prickly pear with an axe until he had an opening by the side of the road. He chopped a few brigalows and ironbarks for the outside walls and stripped bark to make a roof, putting a sheet of bark on four forked sticks to make a table.

  He borrowed a maul from Mr McNab to make slabs for the sides of their shanty, which he did by splitting lengths of brigalow and banging them flat. But when the walls were in place there were great gaps between the boards. He had nothing to fill them with until he hit on the idea of using mud. It fell to Winifred to fetch the water from the creek to mix the mud and to fill the cracks. It proved useless. As it dried it fell out in great lumps, sometimes striking Winifred as she lay, wrapped in a grey blanket, sleeping beside her father on the dirt floor.

  They eked out a miserable living, as Wilfred continued the task of clearing his land, helped by his young daughter who, like him, had never done hard manual work and whose hands were soft and tender when they first arrived. Now they were covered in blisters and festering sores where thorns from the pear had penetrated the skin.

  There was no mention of Winifred going to school.

  Even if Wilfred could spare her, the nearest school was too far to walk. Until they could afford a horse, they had no means of getting around except on foot.

  One of the child’s jobs was to pile the cut pear on the fire while her father slashed and hacked, slashed and hacked. But the pear was green and there was not enough wood to keep the fire going. More often than not the slashed green pear, which lay in great heaps on the ground, simply sent up more shoots.

  Three times a day her father sent her on the two-mile walk to the creek. She had no bucket, even if she had the strength to carry it full of water. Instead she used a bottle and a billy can. Often she would find that when she returned her father would be so thirsty he’d empty the water in a few big gulps then send her off again, no matter how exhausted she felt.

  As Winifred lay awake in the dark at the end of another long day, she would cry quietly to herself, wishing she was back in England trotting alongside Mrs Watkins with her barrow. Sometimes she would try to conjure up a picture of her mother in their room at Lambeth as they sat drinking tea and listening to her father tell stories about Australia. Now she wondered whether her mother had been right all the time, that they should have stayed in England, though she felt sure that things would have been better if her mother had come with them. She would have insisted on finding somewhere else to live, with a real bed and proper chairs, instead of the ones her father had made out of the ends of the saplings he had cut for the uprights of their shanty. The legs were of different lengths, so that they wobbled when you sat on them, and sometimes overbalanced so you found yourself on the ground with the chair on top of you.

  Her father spent the days alternating between terrible rages in which he lashed out at his daughter until she ran sobbing to the creek, and bouts of crying after she had crept back towards evening to find him filled with remorse, a fire lit and a meagre meal on the table. He would hug her over and over, saying, ‘I’m sorry. I’m sorry. I’ve ruined your life. We should never have come to this accursed land.’

  * * *

  The coming of Cobb and Co brought the world closer, but in the three years she had spent in isolation with her father, the prickly pear, like some voracious monster, had invaded almost every inch of their land — there wasn’t even a small patch on which to grow a few potatoes or cabbages. They had only been able to stay on their land because their hut was beside the road and a group of itinerant workers was employed to keep the road free of pear.

  It was a grim and futile existence, with Wilfred’s savings diminishing and his health failing.

  The child had no idea that her father was suffering as he was, that the harsh words he spoke which brought tears to her eyes, or the beatings that made her cry out in pain and outrage, were symptoms of Wilfred’s deep distress at losing the woman he loved, and the knowledge that he had made a terrible mistake. The child began to feel that it was her fault and was certain that he did not love her, seeing her as a burden he did not want. The kind father she’d known in England, who took her to the Cut and brought her a halfpenny worth of treacle-taffy on Sundays and read her stories, had vanished for all time.

  And yet there was a resilience in the young girl that kept her going, once she realised this was her life and she must make the best of it. The creek was her solace. Its banks were a place of refuge where she could escape from her father and daydream, lazily swishing around a piece of bush to keep away the persistent flies, listening to the creek talking and watching as the sun glinted off the wings of dragonflies as they skimmed the surface, while below the beetle-like water boatmen paddled furiously.

  Some days the wind rippled across the surface
of the water and rustled through the saplings that lined the banks, stirring dead leaves that littered the ground, while the girl drowsed in the sun. Sometimes a crow came to rest on a bough above her head, taking no more notice of her than if she was part of the landscape. These were the moments she felt at peace, knowing that the wild cattle were on the other side of the creek and couldn’t touch her.

  Once she had been frightened when a whole herd of these long-horned beasts came charging past her while she hid behind the trunk of a tree. She had seen cows before in the cow-keeper’s yard near Clapham Common, but they were moon-eyed, docile creatures that chewed their cud while their keepers coaxed jets of rich creamy milk from their udders. Often she had been sent to fetch a jug of milk from the cow-keeper who walked along South Lambeth Road, balancing two wooden pails on a stout pole and calling, ‘Fresh milk. Fresh from the cow.’

  These red-eyed beasts were a different breed altogether. Their coats were tangled with briars and they were thin and wiry and tough, with a mean look in their eyes. Winifred imagined that if she got caught by one alone on the track it would toss her up in the air on its horns and she would land in the prickly pear and be pierced to death by the thorns. By the time her father missed her it would be too late.

  When she had tried to tell her father she was afraid of them he had turned on her angrily, picking up a stick and beating her around the shoulders, while he screamed at her that she was useless. Later he had come into the hut where she was lying down, her face buried in her blanket, and smoothed her hair. When she opened her eyes she saw that he had been crying, his face streaked where the tears had cut a path through the black dust that covered his face. He pressed her close and said, as he always did, ‘I should never have come to this accursed place.’