Summer at Mount Hope

by Rosalie Ham

  ‘I’ve come to speak to the thresher team,’ said Rudolph, glancing over to the workers. ‘The Sunshine is still missing drive chains and we need to get this harvest underway.’

  The stubble clogged Phoeba’s nose with spiky dust and flies found their way under her net and stayed there, trapped, gathering about her eyes and lips. The sun burned through her blouse and sweat dribbled down between her thighs. The sharp end of the stubble scraped her skin and punctured her fingertips, and straw dust bit into all her wrinkles. She stood, arched her back to ease its dull ache, and ripped her hat off to liberate the flies. She was fanning her face when Rudolph arrived at her side. ‘This is hot and gritty work,’ he said. ‘Spot still might take you for a swim on the way home. You never know, it might not have been his feet.’

  She laughed, knowing her face must be the colour of beetroot, even though she’d bathed it in water and cleminite. She couldn’t think of anything to say, so they moved through the stubble together, bundling the oats and leaving sheaves in neat stooks in their wake. Rudolph gallantly took straw from Phoeba’s row and made bundles for her. She knew Hadley was watching from the top of the stack – Hadley was a first-class stacker – but she pushed him from her mind and talked to Rudolph about the shearers and the battling pastoralists, the ongoing depression and the National Bank of Australasia, which had just gone under. Yet another ruined nouveau riche had walked into the Yarra River and vanished under the Hoddle Street punt. Rudolph blamed it on Argentina. The country had crashed in 1890, and then Barings of London had failed.

  ‘That’s true,’ said Phoeba, ‘but if the government hadn’t overborrowed the banks wouldn’t have crashed and people wouldn’t be so desperate. And if they’d had their wits about them the banks would have seen it coming.’

  He smiled and shook his head, and when lunchtime came he put his finger under her chin and inspected her angry cheek. ‘You’re mending well, Phoeba, starting to look your old self.’ He had noticed her before the accident! ‘It’s been a lively and interesting morning,’ he said. ‘I’ll see you at the dance.’

  ‘Yes,’ she said, watching him walk away towards his Holstein. It was tethered under the elm trees next to Spot, but Spot was in the sun, straining at the end of his lead to get as far as he could away from the foreign horse.

  Phoeba walked over to the haystack, and sat at its base next to Hadley with her sandwich and her jar of cold, sweet tea.

  ‘How’s Henrietta?’ Hadley shrugged, screwed the lid off his water bag and drank. ‘I’ll see her at the dance.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Hadley, wiping his mouth with his sleeve. ‘I’ll collect you at seven?’

  She looked straight down into his keen blue eyes. ‘People will think we’re courting.’

  ‘I always take you all to the dance,’ said Hadley, then added gently, ‘you haven’t gone soft for Steel, have you? You like your life, Phoeba. You like the farm and things in their place. He’s so … unsettled.’

  ‘Mind your own business.’ Hadley stared at his knees and she knew his heart was aching. ‘I’m sorry,’ she said.

  They ate a sandwich in silence.

  ‘Your moustache is getting thick,’ said Phoeba after a while.

  ‘Thank you,’ said Hadley, and added jokingly, ‘So is yours.’

  Friday, February 2, 1894

  On Friday morning, most of the people in the district arrived at Hadleys’ again wearing sun hats and carrying canvas water bottles and lunches. As Phoeba and her father drove she scanned the crowd, but Henrietta was still not there.

  Henrietta was in her new kitchen. It was lovely, the stove was a Leamington with lifting handles for its moulded hot plates and two ovens with a dish rest each. And it was brick-lined, so the kitchen was much cooler than the one at Elm Grove. The kettle had a wooden pouring handle as well, and there was a view to the homestead through the front window to remind her of her new station. A pot of potatoes boiled on the stove and Henrietta pushed cold roast mutton and raw onions through a mincer. Tears were streaming down her cheeks and she sneezed every few minutes.

  The new Mrs Titterton, breathless, and just returned from a brief honeymoon in Geelong, stamped her small, tight shoe on the floor of her new house. In the kitchen, Henrietta stopped turning the mincer handle and went to her, wiping cold mutton and raw onion on her new uniform.

  Coming carefully down the stairs, carrying three of her new husband’s collars to be washed and a bundle of cotton stockings to be soaked, the stock overseer’s new wife noticed a pale blue envelope stamped with a golden ‘O’ under the front door. It was terrifically exciting and she had to stop and concentrate hard for a few seconds: ‘deep breaths, slow breaths.’ The envelope was addressed to Mrs Pearson. Mrs Titterton pursed her maroon lips in mild annoyance and bent to pick it up but her fingers wouldn’t reach it. Now that she was married she had thought it might be unnecessary to pull her corset so tight, but her new husband, in charge of tying her corset these days, had reminded her that Lilith Crupp was only alive because of her corset. ‘And,’ he said, ‘there’s nothing more becoming than a nice, straight back. They say it shows good breeding.’

  Mrs Titterton tried to bend again but her face turned purple and her toes and fingertips started to tingle. She flicked the envelope with the toe of her shoe, sending it skipping across Henrietta’s beautifully buffed floorboards to wedge under the oak what-not.

  ‘Get that envelope, Henrietta, it’s from Mrs Overton. It’ll be an invitation for morning tea.’

  But it wasn’t.

  ‘She’s forgotten,’ said her mother as she tore the note into tiny pieces. ‘Hadley will be a manager one day and you’ll enter society. We all will. You can’t be a maid. Now pick up that washing for me and when you’ve washed it you can set the table. Hadley will be tired after the harvest and he’ll need lunch straight away.’

  Henrietta pieced the note together in the laundry. It asked if Henrietta would like a job in the homestead – for five shillings a week. Five whole shillings a week. Of course her mother would have taken her money … unless Henrietta moved across the road to live at the homestead! Perhaps she would ask Mrs Overton – but why was she hiring someone when Rudolph Steel was letting everyone else go?

  She tipped a bucket of water into the new washing machine, shoved the sheets in with a handful of soap flakes and fixed the lid shut. Gripping the handle with two hands she turned it with all her might, groaning with the effort.

  ‘Infernal thing,’ she said, looking despondently into the empty copper. If she moved to the homestead she’d lose any chance of going back to Elm Grove. Her mother would punish her forever. Was it worth it? But she hated working for nothing, being dependent. No one ever asked her opinion. No one, except Hadley and Phoeba, ever took any real notice of her. She was always just there, a useful chattel. Only last week it had been possible to ride for the hamper or even to the siding for the mail. In the past two days she’d gone as far as the homestead kitchen, and Phoeba hadn’t been to see her at Overton once! And now Henrietta had missed the harvest for the first time ever – she and Phoeba had always harvested together. It wasn’t fair.

  Phoeba was right, thought Henrietta: there was no God.

  Saturday, February 3, 1894

  On Saturday, Aunt Margaret stepped from the carriage onto the Bay View siding on the arm of a man. In under a week she had bloomed. She was rounder, her skin was smoother and she was glowing. She clung to Ashley Spark in rapture over this tall, thin man in his red-checked suit and black cummerbund. His beard was impressive – it shimmered all the way to his waist – but Phoeba didn’t care for fancy Dans. And when he said, ‘I heard you fell victim to a homesick horse; I’m delighted you are survived so that I could meet you,’ she knew he was a pretender.

  ‘You won’t be delighted for long,’ she replied, tersely. ‘You’ll have to sleep on the parlour floor.’

  Just then, a dense canvas bag thudded onto the siding dangerously close to them, the small, bent mailman g
lowering behind it.

  ‘A tent,’ Mr Spark explained. ‘I am a pantheist. Nature is God so I prefer the natural outdoors.’ He spread his arms to embrace the sheep nibbling at the short dry grass, the regimented vineyard, and the bald paddocks and cultivated crops tinged with Scotch thistles and Salvation Jane.

  Aunt Margaret turned pink with adoration and Phoeba’s heart sank. It was lovely that Aunt Margaret was in love … but with a Dandy?

  ‘The pretty blue crop is Scottish cotton,’ said Aunt Margaret with authority. Phoeba smiled, but her heart sank further when Ashley laid eyes on Lilith: he was a philanderer too.

  ‘I see Eros, Venus, Aphrodite,’ he said, nibbling her knuckle. ‘You must let me sketch you!’Aunt Margaret’s chin went up with pride at his learned knowledge, and after lunch Lilith happily reclined in Robert’s big old wicker chair, gazing wistfully out to the bay, while Ashley captured her profile on a sketchpad.

  Phoeba left the artistes for the sanctuary of the washroom, where she spent several minutes dressing her scarred face with a cleminite poultice. She gathered a camisole, bloomers and her good skirt – blue linen with a red waistband – and then reached for her new blouse. She pulled it from Lilith’s end of the wardrobe, suddenly cold with anger. Lilith had unpicked the bishop’s collar and cut a new low, square neck which she’d trimmed with white guipure lace. The sleeves were now three-quarter, trimmed with the same guipure lace, and there were new Japanese silk bows. Very calmly, she sat at the dressing table for a few moments; Ashley’s rounded vowels, Aunt Margaret’s giggles and Lilith’s charming flirtatious squeak all trilled down the hall. Finally, she put the blouse in a large, brown paper bag then went outside, climbed the peppercorn tree behind the outhouse and hung it on a high branch. The sticky pungent smell of pepper surrounded her, the clusters of small hard seeds rattling in their thin red shells, like tiny castanets. A few cloud wisps reached in from the sea and she studied the blue heavens. That was it then. Marius had to marry Lilith. She went back to her bath.

  Her mother pounded on the washhouse door but Phoeba stayed in the tub, up to her chin in hot soapy water. She used everything in the copper without bothering to refill it from the well or stoke the fire for her sister and mother. They could wash in the dam.

  The tantrum that preceded the dance was one of Lilith’s best. First she complained about the lack of hot water, then about her hair, which she said had gone frizzy.

  ‘Now now,’ soothed Maude, ‘there’s not a drop of moisture in that sky.’

  Next, she complained that no one had put the curling irons on to warm. Then she went to get the blouse. With the strength only summoned by lunatics, Lilith upended Phoeba’s bed, tore everything from the wardrobe and even took up the floor rug. All over the house she stormed, screeching, yelling, demanding to be told where the blouse was.

  ‘It’s my blouse,’ said Phoeba, quietly and calmly. ‘You had no right to alter it.’

  Lilith stamped her foot. ‘You ruined my best corset.’

  ‘I only cut the cords—’

  ‘Well done,’ said Ashley reaching for Lilith’s slim waist. ‘You needn’t wear those unhealthy things.’

  ‘I have had to wear hand-me-downs all my life, Phoeba. Once, just once, I wanted something new.’

  ‘You’re fibbing, Lilith Crupp. You haven’t worn anything of mine since you were six and the blouse is mine, Lilith. My blouse.’

  Lilith grinned. ‘Did you know, Mother,’ she said, ‘that at the ploughing match Henrietta and Phoeba climbed the windmill and watched from the top. Everyone saw right up their skirts.’

  Phoeba laughed. It was so petty, and before she could stop herself she said, ‘Does Marius Overton know that you’re a liar, a thief and a tell-tale now that you’re meeting him at the outcrop for your trysts?’

  ‘Phoeba!’ said Maude, in disbelief.

  But Lilith was only momentarily lost for a retort. ‘We are seeing your true colours now, Phoeba!’ she spat and stormed to her room.

  Aunt Margaret told Ashley to put his fingers in his ears, as Maude and Phoeba had. They waited, then the bedroom door slammed and the kitchen window fell with a thwack to the sill. Its glass shattered into the kitchen sink.

  ‘Phoeba, that is a truly disgusting exaggeration. How could you?’ said Maude, cupping her cheeks.

  ‘Everyone’s talking about it,’ Phoeba said, feeling a surge of daring.

  Suddenly Lilith was back, pointing at her. ‘Phoeba’s always been jealous, mother, always.’

  ‘What are they saying?’ asked Maude, reaching for a chair.

  ‘He’ll have to marry her,’ said Phoeba. ‘I’ve seen them, mother. Together. In flagrante.’

  ‘Mind your tongue in front of strange men, Phoeba,’ said Maude, jerking her head at Ashley.

  ‘Ashley isn’t a stranger,’ said Margaret but Maude said, ‘I said strange men, Margaret. Now get a glass of water with a teaspoon of sal volatile for Phoeba.’

  ‘Is it true?’ asked Margaret hastily pouring a glass of water, her eyes shining with intrigue.

  ‘It’s true. They meet at the—’

  Maude threw the glass of water over her. ‘You’re hysterical,’ she said, fanning her reddening neck.

  Ashley put his arm around Maude’s shoulder. ‘It’s just passion.’

  ‘You are a maiden’s prayer and my sister will be hurt,’ said Maude, shrugging his arm from her shoulder.

  ‘I am an artist,’ said Margaret and stomped her foot. ‘It’s essential I unleash my passions. “She who has never loved has never lived.” It’s a shame you’ve never lived, Maude.’

  ‘I have never lived?’ said Maude. ‘I’d prefer to be dead at this moment.’

  Good, thought Phoeba, now they will watch and see. She went calmly to her room, dried her face on Lilith’s best petticoat, dressed in the blue frock she wore to church every Sunday, and strolled with Spot through the vineyard.

  ‘I hate them all,’ she said, and turned her thoughts to more pleasant things; Henrietta, who she hadn’t seen for days, and Rudolph Steel.

  As the sky darkened and the moon appeared low in the grey sky, she went to retrieve the blouse. It was still in the brown paper bag, but Lilith had discovered it – and shredded it. The guipure lace was torn off and the Japanese silk bows hung in tendrils. Phoeba left it in the tree and said nothing. A calmness washed over her and she wondered if a sense of conclusion was building.

  Her mother and sister had worked quickly, for Lilith sat at the stove in Maude’s blouse, the sleeves cut to the elbows, the neck square and lined with lace from a petticoat. Maude put down the curling wands and pinned a floral posy behind Lilith’s ear. ‘After all that fuss, Phoeba, you choose not to wear your blouse. You are a spiteful girl.’

  She could have re-ignited the argument, said she wasn’t tizzy enough for lace, told her mother the blouse was destroyed, told her mother she could ask the boundary rider about Lilith’s affair. But she didn’t. It would be better if Lilith felt victorious. She would dance all night with Marius Overton and everyone would see, including Marius’s parents.

  The party assembled on the veranda to wait for the sulky. Maude, coiffed and curled with an over-sized ostrich frond shooting from her crown and the family pearls straining around her plump throat. Margaret, startling with her equine beauty wrapped in black and white stripes and a red rose behind her ear. Lilith, still fuming – but pretty in her curls and lace. Phoeba, in her Sunday blue with a white ribbon looped through her loose bun. And Ashley, looking like a gnome in his red checks and green slippers. With a flourish, he presented Phoeba with a sketch of Spot. Her horse resembled a wavy-locked steed fit for bearing archangels in a rococo painting. Ashley could not even draw.

  Spot looked at the five people on the veranda, dressed and waiting, then swung his head to look pointedly at the three-seater behind him.

  ‘You cannot wear that blouse, Lilith,’ said Robert. ‘Go and change it at once or no one will go to the dance.’

>   ‘Very well, we won’t go.’ Lilith sat down, her arms crossed and her lips pressed to a pout.

  Her mother sat down next to her. ‘And you cannot wear that hat, Robert,’ said Maude.

  Robert had dressed in his accountant’s suit complete with bowler hat, which looked like an upturned pudding bowl on his head.

  ‘Well,’ he said, flushing with anger, ‘a mutiny.’ He held out his hand out to Phoeba. ‘You can be your old dad’s partner tonight.’

  ‘With pleasure,’ she said, and lifted her skirt to climb into the sulky.

  Margaret and Ashley lined up behind her and as Maude and Lilith began to look anxious, Hadley swung into the lane in the Hampden.

  In the manager’s house, Henrietta brushed and plaited her hair and wound it in a neat coil around the top of her head. Then she pushed small jacaranda flowers in between the plaits, stepped back from her bureau mirror and smiled, satisfied. She pictured herself, swirling around the woolshed with Phoeba to the pumping beat of an accordion and a piano, and felt a ripple of glee. Dancing was terrific fun.

  Her mother stepped into the room.

  ‘Your father has finished his bath,’ she said. ‘You look like you’ve walked under a shedding jacaranda.’

  Soap scum clung in a rough line to the side of the tin tub. Henrietta scooped out a bucketful of water and took it to the homestead vegetable patch, pouring it all over the rhubarb plant. A small stone, brown and slimy like the seed from a stewed plum, fell onto a green rhubarb leaf. Henrietta leaned closer, wondering what it was.

  Behind her, from the window, Mr Titterton called, ‘Is that my molar? Bring it here, will you?’

  Henrietta decided she would run away. She would go home with Hadley after the dance.

  Spot picked a place at the end of the line of tethered horses within earshot of the music. Overhead, the sky was darkening: a great sheet of cloud slid in from the sea and a light wind whipped swirls of dust on the ground.

  The harvest dance signalled that the district was nearing the end to the toil and the tension of gathering wool and grain, the end to days spent anxiously scanning the skies for signs of threat. Instead, farmers would begin to look hopefully for autumn rains, luxuriating in the lull, the tinkering and maintenance chores, fencing, the mechanical repairs, the weeding, ploughing, scarifying, sowing.