Wildflower Hill

by Kimberley Freeman

  Beattie tucked Lucy under her arm. “Molly, have you met Charlie? He’s my farm manager.”

  “Charlie!” Lucy exclaimed, spotting him for the first time and racing over.

  Charlie, who sensed the situation, pulled up so Lucy couldn’t hug him, holding out the wire and a set of pliers in warning. “Hang on there, little red-haired girl, I’ve got sharp things here.”

  “That’s Charlie?” Molly said under her voice. “I’ve heard Lucy talk of him endlessly. I’d no idea he was black.”

  “He’s barely black,” Henry said with a shrug, not bothering to adjust his volume. “And what does it matter, anyway?”

  Beattie was torn between embarrassment that Charlie could hear them talking about him so openly, and amusement that Henry was so unmoved by Molly’s discomfort.

  Lucy remained with Charlie, talking animatedly about horses and school and Easter eggs. Henry put Molly back in the car, and they drove off. Beattie was surprised: it seemed Molly’s good and gentle heart didn’t have a place in it for anyone who wasn’t white. Selective kindness rather than the genuine variety. It wasn’t often that Beattie had opportunity to feel morally superior to Molly, so she enjoyed the feeling while it lasted.

  “Come on, darling,” Beattie called to Lucy, “I’ve got a little present for you.”

  Lucy dashed toward her, wrapping her arms around Beattie’s middle. “What is it, what is it?”

  “I made you a dress. Pink. Your favorite color. Come inside.”

  Beattie led Lucy upstairs to the bedroom. The little pink dress was lying on the bed. Lucy immediately stripped out of her skirt and blouse. She had lost much of her baby fat—in fact, she had started to look quite different, taller, managing her own buttons. A child rather than a big baby. As Lucy stepped into the dress, Beattie realized that it wouldn’t fit her.

  “Oh,” Lucy said.

  “Lucy, you must have grown two inches!”

  Lucy grinned proudly. “Mama always says I eat like a horse.”

  Mama. All at once, Beattie felt a sense of having lost something precious. Her daughter was growing up somewhere else. With someone else as her mother. She had changed so much in the months since Beattie had last seen her and held her. She would continue to change, no doubt, constantly and constantly, like the face of the sea. Then one day, perhaps, she would change so much that Beattie wouldn’t know her. Not in the intimate way a mother should know her child.

  “Mummy? Are you sad that the dress doesn’t fit?”

  Beattie took her hands. “No. I can make the dress bigger. I’m sad that you are growing up without me.”

  Lucy blinked back at her.

  “Are you happy with Daddy and Molly?”

  “Yes. But I liked it better when I saw you more.”

  “I liked it better, too.”

  “I don’t like school.”

  “But Molly’s right. Once you can read and write, we can write letters to each other and not feel so far apart.”

  “All right. I’ll try a little harder.”

  “That’s my girl.”

  The bank manager increased the interest on Beattie’s loan just as the first cold finger of winter traced itself across the fields. Much of Beattie’s life in the last few years had been consumed with worrying about running out of money, but she had never been so responsible for finding it. She spent long hours over the bookwork, making budgets, going back through old records for past wool clips, and estimating this year’s clip, which was now only four months away. The cold season was not a time to be eking out pennies, and she felt particularly sorry for Mikhail and Charlie, who were men and needed much more food than she did. She knew, herself, from the long days spent mustering and treating sheep for foot rot, that a hard day’s work could make her ravenous. To serve them thin vegetable soup and bread and dripping on such evenings seemed almost cruel.

  But they never complained. And so the three of them became like family, bonded through hardship, sacrifice, and a common sense that they were achieving something together. Beattie knew she occupied a privileged position: she would reap most of the benefits of their hard work. So she vowed to herself that she would repay them, would never take so much for herself that a gap would open up between them and break their bond. After Lucy, they were the people she cared most for in the world.

  Beattie decided it was time to open up the sitting room, even though there were no chairs to sit on. The big fireplace was in there, so she had sewn cushions out of scraps for the floor and bought a secondhand rug from town. While Beattie went over her books for the day, sitting in the windowsill, trying to catch the sun’s warmth through the cool glass, Mikhail cleaned out the fireplace. Beside it was a neat pile of wood that he’d chopped earlier that day. Beattie was very much looking forward to firelight and warmth that afternoon and hoped that Charlie would join them. She couldn’t understand why he refused to spend more time in the house. She had lived in the shearers’ cottage; she knew that it was cold and rough. He worked so hard, and she wished for him just a little comfort.

  She wished, also, to spend a little more time with him.

  That feeling had crept up on her. When they were out working together, there wasn’t time for conversation. They were often working opposite ends of a paddock, calling to each other over barking dogs or bleating sheep or across the muddy ditches. But she drew such comfort from his presence. The more familiar they became, the more she longed for a deep familiarity: to know him better, know about the mind and the heart at work in that lean, graceful body; to draw him closer to her somehow. He was patient and kind, hardworking, strong . . . He was many admirable things. Perhaps she had come to admire him a little too much.

  “There. I am all done,” Mikhail said, scooping up his bucket and his brush. His face and hands were sprinkled with soot.

  “We can light a fire tonight?”

  He shrugged. “I hope so. If room fills with smoke, we will know I need to try again.”

  Beattie laughed. “You go and clean yourself up. Thank you for that.”

  He tilted his head to the side, wincing. “I have very stiff neck. Too old for these jobs now,” he joked. He left the room limping, as he had done since he’d speared his foot on a piece of old fencing wire the week before.

  Beattie eyed the fireplace. It was only afternoon; not cold enough for a fire yet. Though she would have to test the chimney . . . Smiling to herself, she stacked the wood in the fireplace, carefully arranged some kindling, and lit it. For the next quarter of an hour, she tended to the fire, poking it and making sure it wasn’t going to smoke the house out. Then she pulled up a cushion on the floor and sat on it, gazing at the flames.

  Her heart relaxed a little. Yes, money would be tight over the winter, but then the shearing season would come, and she had budgeted so beautifully that when the money came in, they would be fine. She could pay Mikhail and Charlie, she could meet her interest payments, she could even buy some furniture. She closed her eyes and tried to imagine what this room would look like this time next year. A sofa, a side table, a lamp . . . Yes, she could reconnect the phone and electricity: Raphael had spent so much money having the lines run out here, and now they were idle. Upstairs, there would be a room for Lucy. Beattie would miss the girl in her bed, but she was getting far too big to share. Beattie still wasn’t in any hurry to open up the other rooms in the house. She’d rather have the ones she used looking nice. Winter would give her time to sew, here by the fireplace. Ah, yes, when the money came, she could buy an electric sewing machine.

  She warmed herself on her fantasies while the afternoon deepened. Outside, she could hear Charlie coming back to the stables, calling to his dogs, and she thought about making dinner. She went up the hall and knocked gently on Mikhail’s door.

  “Come in,” he called.

  She opened the door. He lay on his bed, on top of the covers, looking stiff and in pain.

  “I’m about to start dinner,” she said.

  “Not for me
tonight,” he said. “I am not well.”

  She was concerned. “What kind of not well? Just stiff from cleaning the fireplace?”

  He shook his head. “I don’t know. I think I have fever.”

  She advanced toward him and put a hand on his forehead. It was warm but not alarmingly so. “Just get some rest, then,” she said. “Charlie and I will eat on our own.”

  But Charlie said it wasn’t worth making a proper dinner if Mikhail wasn’t there, so he ate some bread and honey and went back to the shearers’ cottage. Beattie returned to the fire and used the light to work on some cross-stitch. She stayed up for hours, her hands aching and her eyes straining in the firelight, enjoying the fire as the wind rattled outside.

  At last she couldn’t stay awake any longer and put aside her sewing. She lit a candle to show her the way and left the fire to die. When her foot struck the first stair, she realized she hadn’t checked in on Mikhail again. He was probably asleep. She rounded the bottom of the staircase and listened outside his door.

  There was a groan. Had he heard her footsteps? She leaned close to the door to listen. His breathing was labored. She paused, not wanting to go in uninvited, but worried that he was sick.

  “Mikhail?”

  The groan again; he was trying to call to her. Her pulse quickened, and she opened the door.

  By the flickering candlelight, a grim scene confronted her. Mikhail was where she had left him, on top of the covers, but his body had arched into a rictus. His fists were curled tight at his sides, his back bent like a violin bow. He looked at her with pleading eyes, his jaw clamped tight and his lungs struggling for breath.

  “Oh, God!” she exclaimed, thinking back to his stiffness that afternoon, his fever. “Oh, God! Charlie! Charlie!”

  She ran from the room and through the kitchen, calling Charlie even though she knew he wouldn’t hear her at this distance. She felt intensely the farm’s isolation from the world, from help. Not even a phone to call a doctor. Icy moonlight spread across the dewy grass, threatening to slip her up. A few moments later, she was hammering on Charlie’s door in the shearers’ cottage.

  “Charlie, come quick! It’s Mikhail.”

  He opened the door, sleepy-eyed and shirtless. “What’s wrong?”

  “I don’t know.”

  Charlie felt around on the floor for a shirt, pulling it on but leaving it unbuttoned. He was ahead of her in a second, finding his way through the dark to the house. The wind had whipped up, sending clouds scudding across the face of the moon. She hurried after Charlie, her heart thudding and hot, her breath fogging in the cold night air.

  She waited outside Mikhail’s bedroom door. She didn’t want to see him again; his posture had terrified her. Charlie took the candle in and spoke gently to the older man, who moaned through his frozen mouth but couldn’t make any words. Then Charlie emerged, closing the door behind him, and looked at her gravely.

  “He’s in a bad way. It’s lockjaw.”

  Beattie’s heart tightened. She’d heard the word before, only ever in dark tones. “What can we do?”

  “We have to get him some medical help.”

  “Can you ride to Farquhar’s? Use their phone?”

  “It’s not that much farther to town. Farquhar might not help us. He doesn’t like you.”

  Beattie knew it wasn’t the time to be affronted. “How do you know?”

  “Why would he like you? Your farm’s better than his, and he knows it. He’s got a swamp on his.” Charlie managed a smile. “Town is better. Dr. Malcolm. Abby’s not going to like going out in the dark, but at least there’s moonlight.”

  “Abby? You’re not taking Birch?”

  “I’m not riding to town, missus, you are.”

  “Me? Why me? You’d be quicker.” Safer.

  “Everyone in town thinks I’m a thief. They’re not going to help me.”

  “But surely they won’t still think that. Nobody liked Raphael.” Even as she said this, she remembered Margaret’s opinion of Charlie all those years ago. A white man shouldn’t have his things stolen by a black one, and that’s that. “I really have to ride to town in the dark?”

  “Abby’s a good girl. You can trust her. She can hear and smell things we can’t.”

  Beattie glanced at Mikhail’s door. She dropped her voice very low. “Will he die?”

  Charlie’s eyes were dark pools of emotion. “I don’t know, missus. I’ve seen one fella die from lockjaw and another two come through just fine. While you’re gone, I’ll clean up that wound on his foot and keep him calm.”

  Beattie nodded.

  “There’s a torch in my room over at the cottage,” he said. “The battery’s getting weak, but it will help you get Abby saddled in the dark. Take it with you, too. Just in case.”

  Abby took a while to settle, unused to being ridden in the dark. She snorted and shied at shadows, and it took all of Beattie’s nerve to keep her voice calm and reassuring enough to settle the horse down.

  The wind was high, sometimes rattling, sometimes howling through the treetops. The moon shone, then disappeared through clouds, then shone again. Mad shadows flashed across the road; it felt as though the night were moving and shaking.

  Beattie hung on for her life and urged Abby forward. Her hands burned with cold on the reins, her nose and eyes streamed. Her body buzzed with fear for Mikhail, with extreme alertness for herself. She didn’t want to have a fall and end up injured, too. The road disappeared underneath her, Abby found her stride, and they galloped along the hard-packed dirt toward town.

  All of the little houses were in darkness. It must have been after midnight. She found her way to Dr. Malcolm’s house, tied Abby loosely to the fence. Her nose and cheeks were icy, her ears aching.

  It took nearly five minutes and a lot of knocking to rouse anyone. The porch light went on, the door opened. Dr. Malcolm was there in his robe, his wife shadowing his shoulder.

  “What is it?” he asked, not bothering to hide his irritation.

  “One of my men at Wildflower Hill. He has lockjaw.”

  Dr. Malcolm fought within himself, sighing through his nose. “I can’t come out,” he said at last.

  “But he might die.”

  “Lockjaw, you say?” He rubbed his chin, mouth screwed up reluctantly. “I’ll give you penicillin. And a barbiturate to ease the rigors. Call me in the morning if he’s no better, and I’ll come then.”

  She was too tired, cold, and distressed to feign politeness. “We don’t have a phone,” she pleaded. “That’s why I just rode all this way in the dark. You’re a doctor. You have to help us.”

  He wavered. Beattie felt certain he was about to change his mind when his wife put her hand on his shoulder and snapped, “It’s one o’clock in the morning. He’s not coming now. Which of your men is it? The Abo or the commie?”

  Beattie fought down her anger. “Mikhail is not a communist,” she said.

  “He can only speak Russian.”

  “He speaks English perfectly well.”

  “I’ll give you those medicines,” Dr. Malcolm said, shrugging off his wife, “and I’ll come out first thing tomorrow to look in on him.” He turned to his wife. “You go back to bed. I’ll just be a few minutes.”

  His wife gave Beattie a look—perhaps it was one of superiority or perhaps pity. Either way, Beattie had to glance away to stop her blood from boiling over.

  The doctor prepared two small jars with a few tablets in each and gave her instructions. Then he put her back outside in the cold—unable to meet her eyes—and went back to his warm bed. Beattie untied Abby and started the freezing dash home.

  Beattie left Abby at the stables still saddled, and ran up through the laundry and into the house. She dreaded what she would see when she got inside. She expected Charlie to say that Mikhail was dead, that he had stopped breathing. She braced herself for the worst.

  Charlie heard her and met her in the hallway. “He’s in a bad way,” he said on one rush
of breath. “He’s just had a fit, couldn’t breathe. He’s breathing again now—”

  “He has to have two of these and one of these.” She shoved the pill bottles into his hands. “I’m sorry, Charlie, I can’t do it. I don’t even know if he can swallow and . . . you should do it.”

  Charlie looked at her and nodded. He took the bottles, his warm desperate fingers brushing hers briefly. He turned and headed toward Mikhail’s room, closing the door behind him.

  Beattie waited in the hallway, her face in her hands. Tears threatened, but she didn’t let them spill over. Mikhail had been so good to her, so loyal and so hardworking. She couldn’t bear the thought that he might die. The image of him, his body twisted and stretched, haunted her. She lowered herself to the floor with her back against the wall and put her head on her knees to wait.

  It might have been half a hour later that Charlie emerged, the candle burning low in the holder, and sat with her.

  “Well?” she said.

  “He’s settled. I think the pills might be helping. His body’s softened a bit.” He drew his long legs up and wrapped his arms around his knees. “The doctor wouldn’t come?”

  “He says he’ll come in the morning.” Beattie shrugged, trying to stop her face from contorting with tears. “His wife called Mikhail a communist.”

  “Ah. Her loss. Mikhail is a good man.”

  “The best of men.”

  A pause. “What did she say about me, then?”

  “Nothing,” Beattie lied.

  Charlie’s lips twitched as though he might laugh. “Sure,” he said. “She always holds her tongue, that one.”

  Beattie couldn’t help but laugh. Then she grew serious. “Charlie, do you ever get tired of people around here thinking ill of you?”

  “You don’t think ill of me,” he said plainly.

  “No,” she said, her throat constricting slightly. It felt as though she were saying something she shouldn’t. “No, I don’t. Far from it.”

  “I’ve had to worry about worse things than what Doc Malcolm’s wife thinks.” He nodded at her. “So have you.”