Wildflower Hill

by Kimberley Freeman

  “We really should talk about—”

  “Our first priority is to get you both clean and dry and fed. We’ll talk when the child sleeps. You’re not leaving this house tonight. I’ve a spare room.”

  So Margaret left them, and Beattie gratefully slid into the warm bath with Lucy, letting the heat melt the knots out of her muscles. She pulled Lucy against her, the child’s back pressed against her breasts. Lucy’s spine was bony: had Beattie not noticed before that she was growing thin? A delicious feeling—of relief, of the satisfaction of having done precisely the right thing—washed over her. She kissed Lucy’s wet hair. “I love you, my girl.”

  “When will we see Daddy again?”

  “We’ll get settled here first. You must be patient.”

  Too tired to cry, Lucy slumped against her. Beattie wondered how long it would take for Lucy to forget her father, or at least to forget how madly she loved him.

  Clean, dry, dressed in some spare clothes of Margaret’s that were far too big, and fed on a hot meal of mutton stew, Beattie sat on the couch across from Margaret in a wing-backed chair. Lucy lay on Beattie’s lap, and Beattie stroked her hair away from her soft white forehead while the girl drifted off to sleep. Beattie was exhausted, too, could barely keep her head up. But Margaret hadn’t shown her the spare room yet, and besides, there were important things to sort out.

  “So, how is Doris? Does she look well?” Margaret began, picking up an embroidery ring and a needle.

  “Yes.” Beattie’s fingers itched to sew, too. She liked the way it calmed her mind. “Do you have another of those?” she asked.

  Margaret smiled, kicked toward her a basket full of fabrics and threads. Beattie chose a scrap, some red thread and a needle, and began to stitch. Lucy breathed softly on her lap. “Doris said you might have work for me, that I might be able to earn my board.”

  “I always have work. I make clothes and repair clothes. I’m busy. You can certainly earn your board here helping out. But you would need to help with food costs, especially as you have a little one with you. You can apply for the government relief, though you have to go twenty miles up the road to the next town to do it.”

  Her heart sank. “Is there no other work in town?”

  “Might be. I’ll give you a little while to settle in.” She smiled. “You needn’t look so worried. You’ll be safe here.”

  Beattie dropped her eyes, gazed at Lucy. She found herself crying. “Thank you,” she whispered, though she wasn’t sure if Margaret heard. Then she composed herself, looked up again. “The man who helped us, who rescued Lucy, he said he wasn’t welcome in Lewinford. He was leaving.”

  Margaret narrowed her eyes. “What was his name?”

  “Charlie.”

  “Charlie Harris?”

  “I didn’t ask his last name.”

  “He’s trouble. Those half-bloods have got one foot in our world, one foot in theirs. It confuses them. They all belong together, somewhere, away from the whites.”

  “What kind of trouble?” Beattie thought about how gentle he had been with Lucy. She didn’t want to judge Margaret, who had shown her such kindness. But the Charlie she met didn’t deserve such censure.

  “He was managing Wildflower Hill, a sheep farm on the other side of town. But all the while he was stealing from his boss. Now, Raph Blanchard may be a rogue himself, but a white man shouldn’t have his things stolen by a black one, and that’s that.”

  “I must say,” Beattie ventured, “Charlie seemed very nice to me.”

  Margaret sniffed, dismissing the topic. “Even a stopped clock shows the right time twice a day.” She put aside the embroidery ring and fixed Beattie in her gaze. “This husband of yours, is he likely to come good and ask for you back?”

  Beattie decided to be honest. “He’s not my husband. He’s somebody else’s husband.”

  Margaret’s mouth turned down sternly, and all the prettiness fled her face. “The child was born out of wedlock?”

  “Yes. I was very young and very foolish.”

  “Is she baptized?”

  Beattie shook her head.

  “You’ll need to fix that. There’s a little church here on Maud Street. I teach their Sunday school. She can come along with me.”

  Beattie wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Good. That’s decided, then,” Margaret continued.

  Beattie felt a moment’s consternation. What precisely had been decided? But then she figured that Sunday school and a proper baptism couldn’t hurt. They sat in silence a while longer, then Beattie finally said, “I’m so sorry, Margaret, but I can barely keep my eyes open.”

  Margaret smiled, and her prettiness returned. “You poor thing, you must be exhausted. Leave the child here a few moments, and I’ll show you the spare room.”

  They walked down the narrow hallway to the laundry, where a set of stairs led up to an attic room. It smelled dusty and faintly damp. Margaret switched on the light. The roof was low and peaked, spiderwebs gathered in the corners. The floor was covered in old newspapers. There was a dresser and a single bed in the middle of the room with a thin mattress.

  “It’s not much,” Margaret said, “but it’s a roof over your head.”

  Beattie forced a smile. “I’ll take it gratefully.”

  “I’ll get you some linen.”

  Beattie cheered herself by thinking of cleaning up the cobwebs and saving for a rug for the floor. Margaret’s linen was soft and pretty, and she was happy to lay Lucy down among it, curl up next to her, and finally sleep.

  For the first few weeks, they kept busy and they ate well. Margaret taught Beattie to use the sewing machine, and Beattie took over all of the mending. There were two baskets of it, and more arrived every day. Nobody had money for new clothes, and old clothes needed to be made to last longer. After spending the mornings sewing, Beattie had the afternoons free for Lucy. They gathered up the old newspapers and scrubbed the floor of their room, cleared out the cobwebs, and Lucy even convinced Margaret to let them have one little painting—a scene of a boat on a river that Lucy had become fixated on—to hang on the wall. Margaret took Lucy to Sunday school once a week, and Beattie enjoyed the morning without her, using the sewing machine to mend some of their own clothes. She longed for a length of fabric to make herself a new dress but hadn’t a penny. Margaret urged her kindly to take the bus up to the next town and sign on for government benefits, but Beattie resisted. She was determined to work for her money; she was done with relying on others. So she asked at every shop in the town, told everybody that she was looking for work, hoping something might come up soon.

  At the beginning of the fourth week, something did.

  Beattie sat on the couch, darning socks. Lucy played with peg dolls at her feet. It was the first day so far that she hadn’t moaned about wanting to see Daddy. Margaret had helped—uninvited—by responding to Lucy’s questions about her father with a stern “When God has helped your father to recover, God will help him find you, too.” Lucy was both thrilled and terrified by the idea of God; Beattie was simply terrified by the idea of Henry finding them.

  Margaret was pedaling her sewing machine and didn’t hear the knock at the door. Beattie did and rose to answer it.

  A middle-aged woman with an enormous bosom stood there. She wore eyeglasses, and her hair was piled high and tight on her head. “I’m looking for Beattie Blaxland.”

  “That’s me,” Beattie said, her heart thudding in her throat. What had happened? Had Henry sent her?

  “I’m Alice. I’m the housekeeper at Wildflower Hill. We’ve lost a maid this morning, and I’d heard you were looking for work.”

  “I am!” Beattie said, reminding herself not to be so excited. The job wasn’t hers yet. “Would you like to come in?”

  Alice screwed up her nose. “I don’t think so. When can you start?”

  “Tomorrow afternoon? I work for Margaret in the morning.”

  “Can you make it ten? I’ll need you to he
lp with the lunch.”

  Beattie hesitated but decided she could simply get up earlier to work for Margaret. “Yes, of course. I’ll call at ten.”

  “No, no. I’ll send the car. It’s a long walk, and you’ll be exhausted before you begin.” Alice turned and marched briskly back down the stairs into a waiting car.

  Beattie went back inside and explained the situation to Margaret, who wore a wary expression the whole time.

  “I’m not much given to gossip,” Margaret said, “but I do feel I have to warn you about Wildflower Hill.”

  “Warn me?”

  “It’s a place full of sinners.”

  Beattie tried not to sigh in exasperation. Margaret’s constant talk about God and sin wore on her nerves. She wasn’t sure if she believed in God: her father’s atheism had made her skeptical. But if God were real, Beattie knew he’d be kinder than the God Margaret believed in.

  “So Alice is a sinner?” Beattie asked, hoping she didn’t sound impatient.

  “Those who turn a blind eye to what’s going on are sinners, for certain. You’d do well to remember that.” Margaret smiled, touched Beattie’s hand. “I don’t mean to frighten you, love, but Raphael Blanchard who owns Wildflower Hill is bad news, and you’d do well to stay clear of him when you can.”

  “Thank you for your advice,” Beattie said, reminding herself to be grateful. “Could I leave Lucy here with you while I go up to work?”

  “Of course. We have a good time together, don’t we, Lucy?”

  Lucy responded by hopping up and giving Margaret a hug. Beattie was both relieved and discomfited. But it wasn’t for her to complain. She had a home, food to eat, someone to help her care for her child, and now she had a job. With a little money of her own, she could buy a rug for the floor of their attic room or new shoes for Lucy. She didn’t believe for a moment that Wildflower Hill was full of sinners; she had more important things to be afraid of.

  The car turned in to their street on the stroke of ten. Beattie was waiting nervously outside the front gate, while Lucy watched from the verandah.

  “There it is, Mummy!” she cried.

  “Go back inside. Be a good girl for Margaret.”

  “I’ll be a good girl for Jesus,” Lucy said solemnly.

  Beattie blew her a kiss and stepped into the car. It smelled of oil and leather. “Good morning,” she said to the driver, a large man with a head that seemed carved out of stone. He didn’t respond. Intimidated, she sat back and looked out the window. The town sped by. The narrow dirt road wound uphill, exposing a view of farmland under sunlight on both sides. They thundered over mud puddles with alarming speed. Within twenty minutes, they were turning between two tall stone gates and in to a long driveway. To the west was a small compound of sheds, stables, and a stringy-bark cottage. Up ahead, Beattie could see the homestead: lofty and looming, built of sandstone, with huge windows peaked like cathedral windows and tall chimneys standing out from the tiled roof. A mile behind it stood a forest of eucalyptus, fluttering their gray-green leaves against the morning sunshine, but the garden around the house itself was an English garden. Roses and poplars. The car pulled up near the front door, and Alice, the housekeeper, hurried down to greet them.

  “Thank you,” Beattie said to the driver as she climbed out.

  Alice said, “Don’t bother to speak to Mikhail, he knows ten words of English altogether. Come on, there’s plenty to do. Mr. Blanchard’s having guests for lunch.”

  Beattie was whisked in the front door, then Alice paused a moment in the reception hall. She jabbed her finger in three directions. “There, there, there . . . you are not allowed to go.” Now she indicated to the left with a nod. “You will come in and go straight to the kitchen. I have you on kitchen and laundry duties. I’ll take care of the rest.”

  “Yes, Alice.”

  “You’ll work from ten until six daily except Sundays. Mikhail will fetch you and drop you home. During shearing season, there will be longer hours, but that’s not until spring. As it is, there’s only Mr. Blanchard and three staff here—me, Mikhail, and Terry, the farm manager—though Mr. Blanchard has guests most days and most evenings.” She grimaced. “You won’t see them. Keep your head down and stay in here.”

  “Here” was a long kitchen with floral wallpaper and flat wooden benches. There were built-in cupboards painted pale blue, and a large refrigerator that throbbed monotonously. A tall window at the end of the room let in white sunshine. Beattie went to the window and looked out over poplar trees to the gate, then down over green fields and hills, dotted with dirty white sheep.

  Alice opened a door and pointed down the stairs. “Laundry is down there. I’ll leave the key in the gas for the copper so you don’t have to come find me. I’ll bring down anything that needs to be washed. Mostly sheets and towels for the guests. You can sew?”

  Beattie nodded.

  “If you see anything needs mending, put it aside and save it for quiet times. Usually, around three, it’s quiet until five. You’ll be paid twenty shillings a week, but you’re on one day’s notice. If you let me down, you’re gone, and you won’t be paid for that week.”

  Twenty shillings! Beattie knew it wasn’t much, but she’d had nothing in her purse for weeks, so it sounded like a fortune. The sun from the window was warm on her body, and the warmth penetrated all the way to her heart.

  Lucy liked praying. She had always prayed before bed with Mummy listening, but Margaret had shown her a new way to pray, without saying the words out loud. Just between her and God. And so sometimes she went up to her room, kneeled by her bed and put her head on her clasped hands, and prayed so hard that her ribs hurt for Daddy to get well and come back.

  But still he didn’t.

  One day, while Mummy was at work, Margaret found her and asked her what she was doing. Lucy realized she had been crying and Margaret must have heard it. Margaret looked after her well, giving her little jobs to do, and pointing out the words in books, and giving her cuddles when she was feeling sad. Mummy was out a lot. She felt as though Mummy were shrinking in her imagination, and Margaret was growing bigger. Daddy was the biggest, but she had started to forget his face, like a jigsaw puzzle with pieces missing.

  “I was praying,” Lucy said. “But God isn’t giving me what I want.”

  “What do you want? Some silly Christmas treat?”

  The thought of Christmas without Daddy made Lucy cry harder. “I want my daddy.”

  Margaret came in and scooped her up, then sat with her on the bed, an arm around her waist. Margaret had a pretty face, much like Lucy imagined the Virgin might have looked.

  “I don’t want to have to tell you this,” Margaret said, “but you need to know. You are innocent, you are still holy in God’s eyes. But your parents did bad things. It’s a waste of time to pray for them to change. You must worry about your own soul, not theirs.”

  “What bad things did they do?” Lucy gasped, shadows gathering in her mind. She thought of Jesus on the cross, dying for their sins. And them being so ungrateful. Why, she had never seen Mummy pray once!

  “You’ll understand when you’re an adult. Now, you mustn’t mention this to your mother. God wouldn’t want you to.”

  Lucy nodded. “So if I can’t pray for Daddy to come back . . .”

  “You should pray instead for the strength to stop loving him, so it doesn’t hurt anymore.”

  Stop loving Daddy? Lucy knew God wouldn’t want her to do that. She decided she would keep praying just the same. She would be clever enough not to cry when she did.

  * * *

  Over the next few weeks, Beattie fell into a routine. She sewed for Margaret from five in the morning until ten, when she would kiss Lucy goodbye and climb into the car with Mikhail. On Sundays, after Lucy came home from Sunday school, Beattie would take her to the general store for an ice cream, and they would walk down to the creek—now a harmless trickle—and look for turtles. Beattie did not meet her new employer, Raphael Blanch
ard, though she came to know him through his clothes. Fine shirts and silk robes. It felt strange to be handling the underwear of a man she’d never met, but she kept this thought to herself. She did as she was told, never went anywhere in the house but for the kitchen and the laundry, and knew the satisfaction of stable work, a safe home, and money for food and shoes. It wasn’t the life she had dreamed for herself, but it was a good life nonetheless. As each week passed without any contact from Henry, she began to feel sure that she had truly escaped him.

  As soon as she’d saved some pennies for a stamp and an envelope, Beattie wrote a letter to her parents back in Glasgow. In truth, she had no idea whether they would accept her. Her mother had disowned her on that last awful day, but she hoped enough time had passed for forgiveness. After she posted the letter, she idly wondered if she should return home. But Scotland or England didn’t feel like home now. Lucy had been born here, and the sunshine and broad sky were in her soul. It wouldn’t be right to take her back to a miserable flat in a stinking city.

  The reply came surprisingly quickly, though the return address was not her parents’. It was that of Mrs. Peters, the woman who had lived in the neighboring flat.

  Beattie’s skin prickled lightly, and she noticed her fingers shook as she picked open the envelope. Lucy was running about in the front garden, pretending to be a butterfly, and Margaret was sweeping the front verandah and humming a hymn. Mikhail would be here with the car any minute, but Beattie wanted time to hold still, all movement and noise to stop, as she concentrated very hard on what the letter had to say. Even so, only snatches jumped out at her.

  . . . the new residents of your parents’ flat passed me your letter . . . sorry to say I have no good news for you . . . your mother took the fever and went quickly . . . blessedly quick, she didn’t suffer . . . your father wandered like a ghost for days . . . a fall down the stairs . . . nothing they could do to save him . . . certain that they thought of you often and well . . .