Summer at Mount Hope

by Rosalie Ham

  Outside, under the tree where they had danced, Hadley stood with a gun at his shoulder, aiming at the fleeing backs of the sundowners. At his feet were their bottles of kerosene and their rags. Secretly, he had wanted to capture one of them, just one of them – to drag into the shed in front of the crowd, in front of Phoeba. But the rain had stopped them throwing their flaming bombs. And then, in the flash of silver light, he saw her enclosed in Rudolph Steel’s arms. Yes, thought Hadley, the rain had ruined everything.

  ‘The itinerants were going to set fire to the shed tonight,’ said Rudolph. ‘We found matches and newspaper. All that wool grease, it would have exploded like a crisp eucalypt. We could have been burned alive, but Freckle warned us.’

  ‘What will happen now?’

  For a while he said nothing, then he untangled himself from her and walked towards the shed, and Guston. Through the shattering rain she heard him say, ‘There’s no future in it now, Phoeba,’ and something icy tightened around her hopes. A white finger of lightning reached down and touched the flat plains, electrifying the boiling clouds and bathing the homestead in blue and silver beams.

  She stayed watching the violent storm. It was brilliant and pretty and she clung to the feeling of Rudolph, felt a yearning for him, wanted to feel his breath on her hair and her body harnessed by his hard body. So this was passion.

  Sunday, February 4, 1894

  She didn’t sleep at all. How much destruction had the rain done? As soon as the room was tinged with light blue she was up and dressing. Aunt Margaret sat bolt upright in her bed. ‘Did anyone see you come?’

  ‘You’re at Mount Hope, Aunt, with me.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Margaret and flopped back.

  Her father was in the kitchen, still in his tight suit, its waistcoat open. He kept his eyes on his warming bread. He had aged, overnight, his nose withering like a ripe passionfruit and his eyes opaque. An empty jug of wine and a cup sat on the table.

  ‘That blasted vicar,’ he growled, ‘praying for seasonable weather!’

  ‘There was no hail,’ said Phoeba, her enthusiasm thin.

  Her father was not encouraged. ‘We’ll lose our feed crop,’ he began and sighed, shaking his head. ‘There’s no space to take risks when you’re just trying to survive.’

  They cruised the vineyard, washed green and dripping, and as they walked they rustled raindrops from the flat, rubbery leaves and wriggled the small, hard bunches up and down the rows. They could at least save some of their grapes from being tarnished by the sun, and reduce the risk of mould on the bunches just starting to develop a pasty bloom. Leaves had been stripped and berries ruptured but they would lose only about a third of their fruit.

  They could live with that.

  Next, they stood in their sodden feed crop. The pungent odour of new compost clogged the air as it heated under the rising sun, and the damp seed heads swished softly, muffled. Phoeba’s skirt hung damp and heavy.

  ‘It’ll be shot and sprung by tomorrow,’ said Robert. ‘Overton will be lucky to salvage enough for seed grain.’

  Mid-morning, the sun rose and faint steam saddened the already water-logged crop. The entire district was like a hothouse.

  Phoeba climbed through dull scrub to the outcrop and sat on a washed boulder to study the damage. Around her, clumps of dry grass and bushes bobbed with brown and beige movement – rabbits. Unharvested crops along the foreshore, as far as the looking glass would show her, were marred with great patches of flattened stalks as though a giant had waltzed through them. At Overton, Rudolph and Guston kicked through their sodden crop under a pastel sky. She closed her eyes and shouted to a God she now knew didn’t exist – ‘Please don’t let them go bust,’ – and then went to find Lilith.

  Lilith was sitting on the back porch pushing pins into a heart-shaped pincushion.

  ‘Well?’ said Phoeba, her hands on her hips.

  ‘He’ll come,’ said Lilith and shoved another pin deep into the cushion. The pinheads formed the initials M&L.

  In Maude’s room Aunt Margaret and Phoeba watched the shuddering lump in the middle of the double bed. ‘I can never be seen at church again,’ she cried. ‘I can’t even enjoy a simple drive to Mrs Flynn. The shame …’

  ‘You’re attributing far too much importance to a spat at a country dance, Maude. Now sit up, Phoeba has made you a boiled egg and toast.’

  Maude struggled out from under her eiderdown dabbing her tears with the bed sheet. Phoeba placed the tray on her mother’s lap.

  ‘Our reputation is lost forever. But you, Phoeba, are a great comfort to me. I hope you always will be.’

  ‘You called me a liar yesterday.’

  ‘And,’ said Margaret, ‘you told me she was ungrateful and defiant.’

  ‘You hardly help us cavorting with you coxcomb popinjay friend, Margaret, and where is Lilith?’ Maude smashed the top of her egg.

  ‘One could assume,’ said Margaret, ‘that she was at the outcrop with her dalliance.’

  ‘He’s coming,’ said Lilith coming into the room with the pincushion for her mother to admire. ‘You’d better get up, Mother.’

  ‘If you’d held your tongue, Lilith, Mrs Overton might have been more amenable—’

  ‘You always think you know best, Phoeba.’

  ‘It’s galling, Lilith,’ said Maude, pressing her palms to her temples. ‘All these people think you are sullied.’

  Lilith gazed back at her with blue eyes that were clear, constant and quite sincere. ‘You can expect a different life now, Mother. The front pew at church, the theatre, shopping in Melbourne—’

  ‘I think you’re getting more than you expect, my dear,’ said Maude, sucking the egg from her spoon.

  ‘And I think,’ said Phoeba, ‘that we will all get a lot we didn’t expect.’

  Margaret and Ashley, Lilith and Marius, and Phoeba sat at the kitchen table in the humid silence. Maude marched down the passage and stood in the doorway – the back of her dress was unbuttoned and her powder was applied in dusty pink smudges.

  She glared at the squatter’s son.

  ‘You have ruined our reputation,’ she said, but her livid resolve softened. She didn’t want to scare him off.

  ‘I know we should have been open,’ Marius began, ‘but it was so soon after Agnes died. My parents have come to terms with my … with Lilith now—’

  ‘You’ll find Mr Crupp outside with what’s left of his wretched grapes.’ She turned on her heel and thumped down the passage. In the girls’ bedroom, she clenched her fists, screwed her face in glee and whispered, ‘Thank you Lord.’ Then she eased herself to the floor and reached under Phoeba’s bed for the trousseau box.

  ‘That’s the worst of it over, son,’ said Ashley, slapping Marius’s shoulder.

  ‘Are the grapes ruined?’ said Marius.

  ‘Not all of them,’ said Lilith, and Marius looked relieved.

  Phoeba wanted to feel deliriously happy that Lilith was getting married and going away, but she couldn’t be sure yet. What if Overton had gone broke?

  ‘We, that is Dad and I, planted the grapes,’ she said, folding her arms, like Maude. ‘We’ve lost some and we’ve lost our feed crop. But we’ll manage. One day I will run Mount Hope. I’ll be a vigneron.’

  ‘I see,’ said Marius, weakly, as Lilith dragged him down the passage.

  ‘My God,’ whispered Aunt Margaret. ‘What a coup, Phoeba! Lilith is marrying the squatter from over the hill. You’ve got to hand it to her, haven’t you?’

  ‘I’m not handing them anything,’ said Phoeba. For Marius, ten acres of grapes meant he could establish an independent life, he could settle in the two-bedroom house his father had built before he married well and built a mansion. Mount Hope was the perfect place to start, in his own right, and succeed. Phoeba shook her head. It was an impossible thought.

  Robert squinted at the thermometer nailed to the trellis post. It was 97 degrees, and rising. He was hot and the ventilation promised by the
manufacturer of his pith hat was letting him down. Mopping his brow, he removed his waistcoat and noticed Marius Overton walking towards him with Lilith on his arm.

  ‘Good of you to come,’ called Robert, ‘but there’s nothing to be done. If I had a few more acres we could have made a profit this year. But it’ll be a lean winter.’ He gestured to the emptied outcrop. ‘They’ve gone. I could have used them to strip what’s left of my feed crop.’

  ‘Yes,’ said Marius. ‘I noticed their camp was deserted.’

  ‘This was my best crop of grapes to date, a beauty.’

  Lilith kissed her father on the cheek and headed back up to the house.

  ‘Something’s up,’ said Robert. ‘I only ever get a peck on the cheek when she wants a solid gold safety pin or an embossed bamboo bracelet.’ He shook his head at his grapes, squinted up to the sun. ‘It was no good last year, remember?’

  Marius was watching Lilith walk back up to the house. Sweet, Lilith who snuggled into him and adored him just as he was. She was a girl who thought the front pew at the local church, a few fancy hats and a carriage ride through Melbourne were pinnacles of achievement. He could live up to her. She wouldn’t ride him or needle him to conquer anything. He realised Mr Crupp was still talking to him.

  ‘A dust storm cut the buds to pieces, just one miserable gust of dust. Then in ’91 it was frost, and now this! If it stays dry and warm we’ll get a ton or two for the winery and a hogshead to drink.’

  Marius glanced out to the bay twinkling under the sun. ‘You have water to reflect light, a sea breeze to dry the grapes, the gradient to drain, altitude, good soil—’

  ‘Heat in spring to stir the vines from their winter slumber.’ Robert stopped. ‘Know a bit about grapes, do you?’

  ‘I’ve been reading a bit.’

  ‘How’s your wheat crop?’ said Robert,

  ‘Shot and sprung,’ said Marius, and shuddered. ‘We’ll nut something out …’ He slid his hands into his pockets and made a small half-moon depression in the dirt with his boot. ‘There’s another matter I must discuss,’ he said, still looking at the ground. ‘Perhaps you’ve heard something?’

  ‘Heard what?’ asked Robert, then something dawned on him. He thought of Lilith clinging to Marius’s arm, the kiss on his cheek, some sort of cat-fight at the dance, Phoeba terse and preoccupied. Up on the veranda, the women stared at him, like a group in a photographer’s studio. Maude’s hands moved quickly, working some small white woollen thing with needles. That fop in the tartan suit, Ashley, gave him a thumbs-up and Phoeba had the looking glass trained on him. Even Spot and the ducks were peering at him from the dam paddock.

  ‘I feel the need for a glass of wine,’ he said. ‘How about you?’

  ‘I’d like to marry your daughter, Lilith.’

  Robert took his pith hat off and steadied himself against a trellis post, the words churning in his head. He thought he’d heard Marius Overton say that he wanted to marry Lilith.

  ‘I don’t have any money, Marius. The bank lost most of it and I’m chipping away at what’s left to keep us alive.’ He jerked his head at the watching women. ‘They don’t know about our financial strife; they just think I’m mean.’

  ‘I may have a little money of my own but I don’t think money is everything. You have your land, sir, and a wonderful future in wine – and I’d like to help.’

  ‘You’d like to help me?’

  Marius nodded. ‘There’s a great future in wine.’

  In his mind’s eye, Robert saw a bounteous grain crop in the front paddock and the slope covered in neat vines all the way up to the outcrop. He put his hat back on his head and eyed the young man suspiciously.

  ‘You did say Lilith?’

  ‘Yes, sir.’ He squeezed a vine leaf.

  Robert clasped his hands behind his back, looked out at the sweep before him; this siding halfway between two important cities on a major train line, this bay between two sea ports that glittered on a day perfect for sailing; this land – a hopeful future for his daughters and the next generation. Marius a dilettante? Marius a ditherer? Robert pushed it from his mind – Marius had vision, Marius had capital. ‘I’m the last to know, aren’t I?’

  ‘I’m sorry.’

  Robert headed for the veranda then he stopped and turned. ‘Are you sure about Lilith? She’s not the brightest sud in the wash bucket, but then I don’t suppose she needs much savvy to fathom silk bandeaux and hat ospreys.’

  ‘On the contrary, I find her captivating—’

  ‘And I’d be careful with your cheque book.’ Robert took his hat off again, scratched his bald patch. ‘As one man to another, I’m being honest. It’d be wrong to sell you a bolter or something that drops dead under you when you’re under the impression you’re getting a serviceable mare.’ Now it was Marius who was speechless. ‘Right then,’ said Robert and held out his hand. As he approached the veranda he was smiling from ear to ear; one less mouth to feed.

  At Elm Grove, Hadley sat on a wooden chair in his sparse kitchen composing a pamphlet for his ram emasculator: ‘Improve the sheep of the Empire, prevent loss of blood, tetanus, septic poisoning, fly-strike and needless cruelty and suffering.’

  He threw down his pencil. What was the point? It had all come to nothing. He had lost Phoeba to a ruddy Englishman who’d held her hands and danced her away in the Overton wool shed, his banker’s palm on her strong, fine back, his smallest finger resting on the little ledge where her skirt came lightly off her blue bodice. It ached inside his chest. All he had left were his father’s sheep and a failed dream to make something of them, of himself. He had a future without a wife … or even a farm if Mr Titterton had his way. Bother the rain that was bound to ruin Overton. Bother Steel with his thick, shiny moustache and his English wool suit, and bother Titterton in his two-storey house telling his dear sister how to do things she’d been doing forever and looking lustily at the new house plans. He’d probably fill the paddocks at Elm Grove with pigs.

  ‘He is a louche man,’ Hadley said, his voice bouncing in the empty house. He wished his sister had run away and come home with him.

  The vicar sped through the landscape between brown boulder fences and flattened yellow crops, now worthless. He slapped the reins over the bony rump of his trotting black mare and inhaled the aroma of humid hay cleansed by quenching rain. The air was rich with nature – curdling ditch water, ripe manure and fertile mud. ‘One day,’ he assured himself, ‘I will be a rural dean.’

  He waved to Mr Jessop who was loading a bag of grain – reaped from the bounteous crop the Lord had provided – onto the back of a wagon, stacked high with furniture. Mr Jessop ignored him. This was the second family the vicar had seen packing the contents of their house that morning. His smile fell – the Jessops’ creamy Jersey cow was tied to the back of the wagon.

  He stopped his horse outside the vestry door, climbed down backwards from his buggy, looped the reins through the wheel and went inside, leaving his thin, neglected horse staring wistfully at the shady fence where the congregation usually tethered its horses.

  Wriggling his toes into his sanctuary slippers, he hummed, ‘Come, ye thankful people, come; Raise the song of harvesthome; All is safely gathered in …’

  He scratched out a few words for a sermon thanking Him for ending the dry season. He smiled at Mrs Crupp’s magnificent plum cake wrapped and tied with ribbon on top of the empty crosier cupboard. His grateful flock would buy lots of raffle tickets and the ceiling would be lined before the next blistering summer hit. He cleared his throat, raised his chins and made his entrance. Mrs Flynn smiled brightly from the back of the church and, right at the front, his three reverential Temperance worshippers leaned forward a little on their pew.

  ‘Where has everyone gone?’

  ‘Bankrupt,’ said Mrs Flynn.

  ‘Oh,’ he said, crestfallen, his flaccid neck lowering.

  Outside, his horse leaned towards the shade; the reins tightened around the buggy spo
kes. The horse sighed and shifted back, lowering her head – the reins slackened. The mare shifted her weight forward again, then took a step back, stepped forward and back, forward and back. Finally, the reins unfurled and slid like heavy ribbons to the ground. The horse walked towards the shade.

  At the end of the brief service the vicar emerged into the scalding sun to find his horse gone. He glanced up and down the siding, up to the intersection and he walked around the church. There was no sign of her, just the faint cloud of dust from the Temperance women’s vanishing buggy. Shoving a chunk of Maude’s cake into his mouth he sauntered towards the shop, where he asked for credit.

  Mrs Flynn crossed her arms and shook her head. ‘Nobody gets a free ticket. It’s against railroad rules.’

  ‘I only have the collection money – seven pence.’

  She thought about Freckle, getting ready to leave home from fear of the vengeful itinerants whose plan he’d foiled. She thought of Mr Overton, his unpaid bill, the rain and the ruined crops.

  ‘Only sometimes some people get what they arst for in this world.’

  The vicar’s next hope was the guard on the train. Perhaps he would take seven pence and fruitcake.

  The third wedding cake

  Monday, February 5, 1894

  On Monday, Phoeba woke and didn’t know what to do. She waved Aunt Margaret and Ashley onto their train and went about her chores, not knowing if she should be happy, or relieved, or heartbroken. She tried airing her woes to Spot but it only brought them more to life. In frustration, she joined her mother – who was suddenly crocheting babies’ booties – on the front veranda while watching down the lane to Bay View, waiting for the dull brown form of Freckle and his horse to appear.

  Robert ambled down the passage with his pillow and pyjamas intent on claiming his bed back again but Maude had other ideas. ‘You make me too hot, Robert. Stay in the shed,’ she declared.

  ‘Anything you say,’ said Robert, then added mumbling, ‘anything for peace.’

  Eventually, Freckle rode away from the shop, turned north to Overton and then, an hour or so later, appeared from the outcrop. Maude put aside her crocheting and went to the top step and Freckle handed her a plain blue envelope with a gold ‘O’ on the front and waited, unusually forlorn.