Clever Grand-mère. Grand-mère, like Grand-père, knowing so much and understanding everything. What Mary Ann would have given to have that old grey head nodding off over her crochet hook as she sat in the corner of the kitchen.
By the time George and the men returned next day the baby had settled and Mary Ann was busy out in the yard helping Job replace some of the burnt palings round the pig sty. As the gate creaked open she flew across the yard.
“My bloody oath!” George shook his head as he stared at the burnt roof of the barn, the blanket of dust and the bare branches of the gums. “My bloody oath!”
“George! Oh George!” She threw her arms around him.
“Give over, girl, give over.” He patted her shoulder and placed a kiss on her forehead, “Where’s the mare? Where’s them Spanish sheep?”
Every detail tumbled out. The long wait, the anxious hours as the flames approached, the animals, Job’s endless toil and the fear, above all, the fear.
“Never seen nothin’ like it,” he kept repeating, while the Irishmen shook their heads and muttered between themselves.
“The Missus saved the day, she did,” Job stated, eyeing the two men warily. He did not look at his master. Mary Ann sensed the old man’s distrust. Did he suspect George’s intention of getting rid of him?
“You did well, you certainly did, but there’s a mighty bit of work needs doing now. Look at that stable roof, and the fencing over by the trough.” He freed himself from her arms and moved away, calling to the men to follow him.
What did all those myriad details matter? Mary Ann stood back and watched the men following their master. The important thing was that they were safe – and Bywong remained as it had always been. The house, the orchard, the dairy, nearly all the sheds - a bit damaged and sooty - but they were there. Grand-père and Grand-mère’s beloved home had been saved.
Although she would not put it into words, all Mary Ann asked for was that George turn to her, put his arms around her and make her feel like a woman again, instead of one who washed and cleaned and mopped and cooked while he fell into bed each night in silence and snored the night through..
Now, as day followed day and George, the Irishmen and Job laboriously set about righting so much which had been destroyed, Mary Ann felt her husband slipping further and further away.
Angrily, he stamped indoors for his meals and ate them in silence. He fetched in the buckets from the well resentfully if he could not find Job to do it for her. Not once did he pick up either of his daughters, instead he frowned if they made any noise and many a night Mary Ann paced up and down with young Lizzie to stop her from crying.
On those occasions when she turned to him at night and pressed her face against his shoulder he’d yawn and roll over. Words that cannot be spoken in the harsh light of day can be whispered in the dark when encircling arms give the comfort that ushers in sleep, or love. But scarcely a syllable escaped his lips, no longer did she hear those comforting words.
“Dear George, you work so hard. It’s all so worthwhile and you are so good.”
A stifled yawn came as a reply and he burrowed deeper in the pillow.
Night followed night with the occasional punctuation of sheer animal release on George’s part, but tenderness and care had flown away and that travesty of contentment which can cloak a marriage now ruled the day.
Casual exchanges, the weather, the state of the paddocks, the whereabouts of some lost stock, all the patina of life which masks the real questions that need to be asked, were their sole communication.
Was this the way of marriage? Who could she ask? She’d not want to discuss such a subject with either sister and there were no other women of her acquaintance close by. Isolated and very sad, Mary Ann turned the subject over time and again as she sat with the baby in her arms watching Cathy playing with her dolls.
It was all there. Even a tiny human being like Cathy was already tending to another, brushing her doll’s hair, changing its clothes. Is this all that we are here on earth to do? The words remained unspoken; who would listen?
Yet she remembered Grand-père had always spoken to Grand-mère with love, and when she recalled the past there had been many times when he had put his arm around his wife’s shoulders and laughed with her. And, for all their occasional tiffs, they were happy enough, certainly still husband and wife, not just master and servant. And Hannah and Edward, and Elizabeth and Henry certainly shared many a confidence and there’d always been a loving embrace each night when husband returned to wife.
A sham! Why am I living a sham, Mary Ann asked herself. And yet, perhaps she was wrong, perhaps she had jumped to conclusions. Times were difficult, the fire had brought about so many extra tasks. George worked so hard, always out from dawn to dusk; she certainly could not point a finger.
Rain started to fall again and continued over the next weeks. Good, solid, steady rain raising the level of the dam and bringing the ducks quacking back from wherever they’d flown.
A green sheen spread across the paddock by the end of the week, and at the finish of a second week a hint of fresh verdure touched the stricken gums. Some trees were gone for good, the elms Grand-père had planted along the drive remained blackened and stark, the she-oaks would never recover and several apple trees had been reduced to mere stumps. But Mary Ann marvelled at the land’s recovery.
“Never seen anything like it, Job.” They were chatting in the dairy as he moved some heavy buckets for her.
“Well, you’ve not seen a fire before, have you? Drought’s come through but not fire in many a year and you’d be too young to remember.”
“Little fires perhaps, nothing like we had.”
“Your grandpa reckoned we’d bin completely wiped out back when they started to build the new house,” Job maintained. “That time the barn went down to the stumps and them fence posts all went too, not a gate left neither. You wasn’t even born then but I remember, alright. Never seen nothin’ like it but we wasn’t wiped out, and we ain’t now.”
“I just can’t believe the paddock’s nearly green again.”
“Good sweet grass. Still, don’t do to let ’em fill their bellies too soon, they’d be scouring in no time. We’ll move them wethers out the far paddock a-whiles.”
“You leave all that to me,” George said when she repeated the old man’s words that night. “You’ve had more’n you can handle lately. Course we’ll shift the wethers, don’t need no advice from that old wiseacre. Never knows when to hold his tongue, that old ‘un.”
“Hold his tongue?”
“Always ready for a gossip, he is.”
“Well I suppose as he’s getting on he’s more inclined to have a chat.”
“I’m glad you come round to seeing it my way, Mary Ann. Time for him to move on, I’d say. Like I said before.”
Mary Ann stared at him. Hadn’t the subject been relegated to the past?
“When folk get too old there’s always work can be found, a bit of woodchopping, or something down the village.”
“We can’t get rid of Job. He’s been with our family since he was little more than a lad, as I said last time. He’s lived with our family all his life.”
“Too long, some might say.”
“Have you forgotten the fire? If I’d not had Job here we’d have been finished.”
George smiled at her. “What happened during the fire was all your doing, Mary Ann. A miracle, I grant you that. He, after all, just did your bidding, didn’t he, but if you ask me it was about his limit. Time to put him out to pasture like the old grey mare.”
“You can’t put people out to pasture just as if they’re animals. He needs some work. He’s always had that hut at the back of the sheds. He can go on living there and just helping out. I always need a hand with the orchard, the digging with the vegetables and the chickens anyhow.”
George fixed her with a disapproving stare. She never used to stand in his way like this. She’d given way over the selling of the
land, she’d said no more when Mick and Seamus came, she usually stepped back from any argument and held her tongue.
George’s hostile gaze didn’t falter. Job had to go.
Job was the ears and eyes of Bywong. The old man knew everyone who came and went, some might say he knew every blade of grass on the property. George did not want someone looking over his shoulder all the time. Job had to go.
“Briggs down at the smithy’s looking for someone. Easy work, just fetching and carrying and seeing to the horses. Little room out the back, all he could need.”
“He belongs here,” she muttered stubbornly.
“Think, Mary Ann. ’T’would be a good place for him in his old age; work he can manage, place to live in the village.”
“I think not.” To preclude any further argument she left the room, shutting the door exceptionally gently - a far more subtle rebuke than a slam.
Nothing more was said though she wondered if any hint of the situation had filtered through to the old man, since he remained unusually silent in the following days.
He didn’t call by the kitchen to ask her what he could bring up from the vegetable patch, he turned away and appeared quite deaf when she took out the bucket of pigswill. So she was surprised when a couple of weeks later he called out and hurried over to her as she came back from the well. “You never ought’a be carrying that weight, not you in your condition.”
Amazed she put the buckets down at once. No one knew she was expecting again, not a word had been spoken. She regretted she’d listened to those who said that when you are suckling an infant you cannot conceive again. She was nearly two months gone but had not even told George. The right moment will come, she kept telling herself, but he always hurried over his meals, sped off to the pastures or fell into bed and snored almost immediately. “I’ve not said anything, Job, no one knows, no one.”
“Ain’t seen you day in day out since you was in swaddling clothes without knowing a thing or two. I know, and you leave them buckets for me.”
That night she’d tell George. The new life which she had hugged to herself would be a secret no longer. But somehow that right moment never came.
A strange remoteness crept into Mary Ann’s life. A subtle detachment from daily life as she began to think about the new arrival. She was tired. So tired that the very thought of another birth, another life to care for, filled her with dread. If only she could have laid her head on George’s shoulder and shared those fears, then all would have been bearable.
The birds did not sing as sweetly as she recalled, the scent of roses scarcely touched her nostrils, the sky was not as blue, the grass not so green. I’m imagining all this, she told herself as she sat listlessly shelling pea pods at the kitchen table. A veil of uninterest had fallen over so many of her days. Whereas before she’d eagerly asked George about the doings out in the paddocks, now she felt no curiosity at all. He’d taken on that life. He always answered her in monosyllables, almost putting her in her place and that place was the kitchen.
Left with the house and its surrounds she’d filled her days with the usual domestic chores, trying to convince herself all the while that she was experiencing contentment, whereas a sneaking feeling told her that resignation would have been a truer description.
Perhaps the coming birth produced this strange lethargy? Her second birth had been so frightening, this must be the reason. The pangs had not been forgotten, nor the dread, even though she told herself over and over again that next time she would not be so exhausted, next time it would be different…and all the while she hoped beyond hope that she would have a son. George may have shown little interest in Cathy and Lizzie but the mere mention of a son brought a rare smile to his face. Surely this time she would be lucky and that might change his whole attitude. So she tried hard not to fear the birth, and stepping back from all the worries, becoming more of an onlooker, regarding her daily life from a distance.
While the grass grew thicker in the paddocks and the trees shaded the ground once more there were very few changes to those other casualties of the fire. Admittedly, the dairy had a roof again - it had been a first priority - but the cowshed still gaped wide open to the elements and the cows were brought into the barn for milking nowadays. The trap remained in the open, prey to all the vagaries of the weather, and tools with their wooden handles burnt off lay scattered just as they were when the fire had pounced on them.
“Are they going to start on the sheds soon, George?” She asked, for she hadn’t seen either of the men for several days. Job milked the cows and she helped him out when Lizzie slept and she could take Cathy to the barn with her.
“They can’t be everywhere at once, Mary Ann. Those rails down near Palmers are taking every moment. We’ll be down there today till nightfall. Give us time.”
Something about the ‘us’ snagged at her consciousness, as she watched him leave the yard with the two men. Laughing and chatting the three men disappeared past the dam, leaving her with a sense of exclusion. They would be away all day, George would come home exhausted and silent and once again he’d fall into bed and snore beside her.
Men had the best of it, she told herself as she put the breakfast before him next morning. He would be off round the property but she would see nothing but the same as she had seen for days and days. Pots to be cleaned, floors swept, children’s demands.
‘Anyhow, they’ll have their work cut out for a while. I’ll need to go to Yass - yearling sale.”
“Yass? A yearling sale? I thought you’d seen those beasts over at Bungendore. Didn’t you say you’d make an offer and…?” Mary Ann ladled out the porridge.
“You got it wrong. You misremembered again. What I said was…”
“Couldn’t we come with you?”
George looked suitably shocked. “What are you thinking of Mary Ann?”
“We could take the tarpaulin, we could camp out under the stars like Grand-père used to do. Cathy would just love that. It’s only for a few days. Such a difference, just to do something different for once in a while.”
“You know what I think,” he regarded her carefully. “I think ’tis time for a visit to your sister up in the city.”
“Oh, George!” So he’d listened to her after all. A journey to Hannah, a while in the city. Now he had those men he must feel he could leave the property. “Oh, George.” she hurried over and threw her arms round his shoulders.
“I was thinking for you and the little ’uns. Can’t expect me to leave the property, can you?”
CHAPTER 16
Several times during her journey Mary Ann regretted she had agreed with George. Never more so than when they passed through Bargo Brush. The coach hit a rock and came to a crunching halt, straddling the narrow road with a ravine on one side and a solid wall of rock on the other. Everyone had to get out, the horses were released from their traces and by the time the pushing, shoving and shouting had finished she made up her mind this would be her last journey away from Bywong.
“Dunno what you’re complaining about, Missus,” one of the other passengers wryly observed when finally they were back on board. “Last week’s mail was bailed up good and proper. Now, that would be something to carry on about, wouldn’t it? They took the mail, took the horses, tied the driver to one wheel and his passenger to the other! We’ve not had nothin’ like that, have we?”
“There’s potholes in this road you could lose a haystack in,” muttered Mary Ann as she cuddled her daughters to her. Lizzie began to drop off to sleep but Cathy never stopped scratching. For the inn where they’d spent the previous night crawled with lice and bugs. Foetid air and grey sheets had been their lot. Grand-père’s words over the years came back clearly to her.
‘Nothing but a blood house!’
Well, that blood house certainly lived up to its name.
Wistfully she recalled her last journey to the city. Their nightly camps under the stars with Job tending the fire and their blankets rough and welcoming, then t
hat one night in the homely inn. That was how journeys should be. The old Guise coach had gone now. George had sold it months ago.
“Best shift the old thing before its wheels fall off.” A smart little trap had taken its place, though now its paint was blackened and blistered. All those happy memories of family excursions had rumbled off into the past with the ancient coach.
“Four days since you left home. You poor angels, oh, how you must have suffered. You look exhausted, my dear.” Hannah gathered them in her arms when they arrived. “A good night’s sleep, that’s what you all need. You’ll be as right as rain in the morning. Here, let me have Lizzie. The little love.”
Taking the baby from Mary Ann she led the way to their room.
Mary Ann tiptoed down the passage behind her, grasping Cathy’s hand. Once again that feeling assailed her. For a second time she felt like a wild thing from the bush that had strayed into a paddock full of prime stock. She became acutely aware of her dusty boots and crumpled clothes. Catching sight of herself in the mirror which still hung outside the parlour did nothing to dispel that illusion. Admittedly the dark curls still framed her face, just as they had on that last visit, but now dark smudges of exhaustion spoke of disturbed nights, tiring days and endless toil. Brushing aside her hair she stared for a moment at that reflection. The slight indentation from cheek to chin would soon become deeper just as the faint lines near her eyes marked the beginnings of a wrinkle. Perhaps Hannah was right and a good night’s sleep would wash away those signs of fatigue but she’d seen the changes for enough months now to doubt they’d ever be reversed.
Mary Ann followed her sister with the uneasy sense of intruding upon hallowed ground. Once again the scent of pot pourri and beeswax greeted her and the bedroom smelt of freshly washed linen and lavender.
“What a shame George could not accompany you,” her sister commented as she patted the counterpane and held the baby close. “Now there’s water in the jug and all you need over there on the washstand. I’ll help you with the little ‘uns. Make yourself comfy and then we’ll go down to the kitchen. Young Cathy must be as hungry as a hunter.”
The Hanging of Mary Ann Page 19