The Hanging of Mary Ann

by Angela Badger

  “Neither was Job, nor were our boys in their time, but they could always fix a roof.”

  “I’ll have a word with ’em.”

  “Not ‘have a word’, George.’ Tell them! Half the day they’re nowhere to be found, they’re sheer lazy.”

  “You’d better watch your tongue, Mary Ann. If you speaks ill…”

  “Speak ill! What are you talking about? You give the orders, you don’t take them, for heaven’s sake.”

  “We’re that lucky to have those lads. Half the labour in the place has gone to the goldfields.”

  “Yes, yes, so you’ve said before but the truth of the matter is they’ve not gone only because they’re bone idle. That’s a fact.”

  “I’ll speak to them.”

  “Sometimes I think you’re scared of them.”

  The moment she made the remark she’d wished it had never been said. George’s face suffused with a dark tide of resentment and he threw himself out the door, slamming it violently behind him.

  He did not come back midday, by mid-afternoon he still had not returned.

  He did not come home all day. He did not come home that night.

  Next day silence enveloped the house, even Cathy whispered as she played with her dolls. The house had never been so quiet and all she could think of was getting out of it, taking herself and the girls off for a spell, at least talking to another human being.

  “Now you brush your own hair Cathy. I’ll see to our Lizzie” Laying the baby down, she left the little girl sitting beside the cradle while she went out and put the mare between the shafts of the trap. Soon they were trotting down the main street. She breathed a sigh of relief at being out and away from the chores, if only for a short while.

  “Good day Mrs Brownlow,” the storekeeper nodded, “and what can I be doing for you this fine afternoon?”

  She nodded and took out her list but immediately became aware of his sideways glance at the only other customer in the shop. A look exchanged, a slight pursing of the lips and the hint of words that hung in the air - she sensed that she had interrupted some titbit of gossip. Had they been talking about her as she’d hitched the mare to the post outside?

  The few minutes she spent at the counter were no longer a pleasure. She hurried through her purchases and made her way to the smithy.

  “Those brackets, Job, remember those brackets in the kitchen? Well, I’ve brought the broken one and if you can get Mr Briggs to copy it, that’s just what I need. But while I’m here, can you open up this hook for me? It’s closed up tight and I can’t hang anything on it.”

  Job had settled into his new occupation with the usual resignation of his kind. He’d been given a room at the back and had the use of the yard whenever he wanted. The blacksmith knew a good worker when he saw one.

  “Settled in, Job?”

  He did not reply. Instead he picked up some pliers and took the hook from her.

  He did not say another word till he handed it back to her, then the ghost of a smile flitted across his features.

  “Little’un can stretch her legs, eh? Let me give her a lift?” Children were always welcome in Job’s world. Cathy scampered across the yard and, with Lizzie in her arms, Mary Ann leant against one of the rails watching the old man stack some firewood.

  “Them Irish givin’ satisfaction?”

  Mary Ann shrugged. Many times she’d wondered if Job thought she had known about his dismissal before going up to the city, left George to do the dirty work in her absence. “Job,” she began, “Job, I hope you realise I never wanted you to leave Bywong.”

  He put down the broom and lowered himself down on to a nearby log. “Never thought ’twas your wish Miss Mary Ann. Never for one moment.”

  How lovely to be Miss Mary Ann once more. She bent down and touched his shoulder for a moment as though to reassure herself that her past was still intact.

  “I’m sorry.”

  “Yes, I’m sorry too but most of all I’m sorry for your pa…and thinking back, his pa before him, and all the rest of ’em. Proud they were, proud as peacocks and what…” He stopped. He’d said too much.

  “What do you mean?”

  “’Nough said.”

  “No, it’s not enough. What do you mean?”

  “There’s folks who’s always on the lookout to better themselves, Miss Mary Ann. Your pa and old Mr Guise and all them family worked hard and earned every penny. But there’s those who just sits about and waits for an opportunity and then jumps in and makes a killing.”

  “Who are you talking about?” The needless question had to be asked.

  “Them… them Irish.”

  “That family have always been down by the river. That’s been their life, they never changed.”

  He nodded. “But they’re looking to change it now.” The glance he gave Mary Ann spoke volumes. “Just have a care, Miss Mary Ann… have a care.”

  The shadows were lengthening when she drove the trap into the yard. The milking had been finished – two full pails stood on the table in the dairy. Otherwise the house and yard were just as she had left them - empty.

  Task after task swallowed up the next hours. The mare unharnessed, fed and watered, the lamps lit, the girls fed and put to bed, George’s dinner to prepare. Finally by the light of the stable lantern, she went about her work in the dairy - butter made, milk skimmed, buckets washed and all left ready for the morning’s milking. She finally made her weary way back across the yard.

  Would George come home tonight?

  The day had been long and every bone ached but she did not want to go into that empty bedroom and lie in the bed, alone. A sense of unreality pervaded her thinking, a sense of being completely out of her depth and at the mercy of tides that she did not understand.

  Perhaps it was the coming baby? She’d delayed too long, she must tell George tonight. Whether he was pleased or not there was no more time to lose as she knew it was beginning to show.

  She laid the table for George’s meal in the kitchen and sat with her sewing on the settle. She waited till well past the usual hour of his return, working away steadily tacking and hemming by the light of two candles. A growing sense of purpose slowly, inexorably, took hold of her, steadying her will. Questions must be asked. Answers must be given.

  When she heard the grating of George’s boots upon the step her resolve almost dissolved, but she bit her lips and waited. Wives and husband always had problems, there were no perfect marriages. When she told him her news he’d have to take notice.

  “Still up?”

  “You’re late.” She did not ask him where he’d been, it might bring forth another torrent of complaint. Instead she fetched out the bread and took the chicken and vegetables from the oven.

  “Just busy.”

  She put off the moment and tried to gather her thoughts together.

  “Had the trap out, I see.”

  “Went into town today. Called at the blacksmiths. Saw old Job.”

  George uttered a laugh. “That old scoundrel. He’s lucky to be there…”

  “He always did an honest day’s work.”

  “Meanin’ what?” His eyes narrowed as he watched her.

  “Something’s up, George. He was strange, different. I feel people are talking about us. There’s something up, isn’t there, and I don’t know what it is.”

  Her husband gave a sigh.

  “I must know. Is there trouble? You don’t need to sell any more land, do you? What’s the matter.”

  He gave another sigh and then leant on the table and smiled to himself.

  “S’pose the trouble could be the way you go about things.”

  “Me? The way I go about things! What do you mean?”

  “There’s got to be some changes made, Mary Ann. You need that much help about the place, you need someone as can work with you, help with the little’uns and such.”

  She listened in silence.

  Now was the moment to tell him about the coming b
aby. But strangely she could not find the words.

  “Have you looked in the mirror lately, my girl?” Picking up the candle he laid a hand on her shoulder and pushed her across to the small looking glass on the wall. “Look at yerself, worn to a frazzle, you are.”

  The light cruelly highlighted her gaunt cheekbones and hair all awry.

  “You’ve more than enough on your plate.” She could hear the conciliatory tone in his voice, a false concern. “The dairy, the hens, the orchard, the house, the little ’uns – you’re hard at it from morn to night you are, just like me. You need some help you do. Fact is, we need’s another woman about the place.”

  Another woman? Two words. Two simple words that shattered the fragile façade she had fashioned around her fears and doubts.

  How could mere words cause such pain?

  Gathering up her skirts she wrenched herself from his hand and flew down the path to the privy. She flung herself to her knees, retching violently into the pan.

  Even in her distress Mary Ann’s reasoning still held. She found herself amazed and utterly confounded by the pain. That emotional pain could translate into sheer bodily agony added to her distress.

  Rejection, rejection, rejection! She muttered the word again and again. Her stomach shrank into a ball and she vomited once more. Immediately the agony spread from the stomach to the heart. Heartache, hinted at and spoken of almost lightly in songs and stories was no fictional state. All the buried fears that had banked up and remained unspoken were released in a gigantic wave of emotion. The desperate, gripping physical pain amazed her. A cramping that bit into her left side and clamped a cruel band around her heart.

  Uncontrollably she threw up time and again, then her bowels loosened and she had to sit there, tears streaming down her face. “My God, my God, what’s happened to me?”

  She clutched her hands together as though seeking reassurance, reassurance within herself. There is a place beyond suffering. There is a place where despair writhes in the mind to such an extent that it takes its tortures out on the body. You’d like to be done with that body. Love and passion can turn into sheer hellish pain.

  Hard on the heels of pain came fear. Too far from the safe shores of everyday life, never again would the solid world of reality be there beneath her feet. Instead, the maelstrom had snatched her and all around deep peril surged.

  Yet all the while, that logical Guise mind ticked off the facts just as though, all along, some secret tally had been kept, an inner account compiled. The arrival of the Irishmen, the blowsy mother’s defiance, the sunhat and the memory of that other woman’s greedy eyes. The constant trips to Goulburn and the sale of the land. All along George had wanted the property, he wanted Bywong and he had achieved that desire. She, herself, was part of the deal. The deal once made left her expendable. Now this other woman waited in the wings.

  In the wash house she splashed water on her face and ran her fingers though the dark, wild hair. Stumbling across she threw open the door of the kitchen. George sat at the table, a chicken bone in his fingers. He looked up questioningly.

  “Did you mean that?”

  He put the bone down and half rose. “You need help Mary Ann. Too much you’ve got on your plate. The lads’ll back me up, you need help and they reckon their sister…”

  “Give her her name!”

  “What?”

  “Her name!”

  “’Tis Brigid.”

  “Brigid! All along I’ve wondered what she was called. All these years they’ve lived down there and I’ve never known. Just fancy that…” she added with a hollow laugh, “just fancy that… I never knew that one day she was going to have my home.”

  “Now wait on, Mary Ann, don’t take on like this…”

  “And that old harridan will come too. I suppose we’ll give her Grand-père’s room, eh? And I’ll have the girls in with me, is that so? And time will come when everyone takes their orders from your Brigid and even my daughters will turn to her because she’ll be the mistress of this house!”

  “Wait on, Mary Ann, I never said nothin’ like that.”

  “You don’t have to. They’ll take over, that family, Brigid and her brothers, and that will be the end of it.”

  “I told you, you need help about the place, that’s all ’tis.”

  “No, thank you very much, George. I don’t need help and I don’t want her in my home. You can tell her she’s not needed.” Mary Ann’s hands shook as she brushed some crumbs off the cloth and then sat down opposite him.

  George sat back. He narrowed his eyes and rocked to and fro as he tried to make up his mind. There’d been trouble on the horizon for a long while. There’d been hell to pay on occasions with Brigid and it would only get worse if he didn’t fall in with her plans. Why did women have to make such a fuss about everything. He’d been quite happy with matters as they stood. Those secret meetings, the trips which had been such a delight, then there were always those eager arms awaiting him when he went across the paddock and over to the hut. At the same time home had always been there, welcoming, a good meal and a warm bed. Why did women constantly have to make these demands? Only last week Brigid had delivered an ultimatum. “And would you be thinkin’ I’ll be content to spend the rest of me days with our Mam livin’ in this humpy, eh?” Before, there had only been hints, now they’d reached the crux of the matter. “I’ll be off and away to Goulburn meself soon, find a good situation and a good master no doubt. Our Mam always says there’s bigger fish in the sea than ever come out of it.”

  Marriage had become a habit, George accepted that. A vaguely tiresome exchange of thoughts, but a decent enough habit. And hadn’t it brought him all he’d desired? But every time he caught sight of Brigid his heart lurched. Maybe that was a habit too but it showed no signs of easing. From that first moment when their eyes met across the street in Gundaroo he’d wanted her. First of all a casual greeting, then a lingering down near the river and a wave and a smile. An offer of help to move some fallen timber, a visit to inquire how the family had fared when a sudden flood surged over the river bank. All such simple steps towards the much more complicated dance of love.

  No hurry, no impatience, small favours, chance and not-so-chance encounters and then the first touch, a hand on a shoulder then an arm around the waist. George was no stranger to the moves and knew too well that time was needed in all affairs of the human heart, and daily business, if full satisfaction was to be gained. Hadn’t he proved that? All that time dancing attendance on old man Guise had certainly paid off dividends.

  But, cunning as he was, George did not fully realise that two could play at that game and the other participant was even more skilled than himself. By the time he called by the hut one day and found Brigid on her own, matters had already reached a point where each understood the other’s motives but no one had in fact taken the first step.

  “Keep ‘im waitin’, me bird, keep ‘im waitin’,” chuckled the old woman, “but you needs to pick the right moment. Can’t expect him to be around for ever, there’s plenty younger than you round these parts!”

  The right moment came on that day when he’d ridden out past the dam and across the paddock. Lazily the smoke spiralled out of the chimney and the hut was bathed in that strange light that rivers can give off, the miasma of slow relentless progress. Whether these thoughts were the touchpaper which lit George’s deepest desires it would be difficult to know, but something in the laziness, the power, the mystery of the hut and all it could mean to him urged him on.

  Brigid came to the door. No word was spoken. She held out her arms and he stepped across that threshold.

  Neither were strangers to the art of seduction, but then seduction had already been completed: the words, the smiles, the random meetings. No need to tarry any longer and lifting her into his arms he carried her past the hessian curtain and threw her down on the bed.

  He tore at her bodice as she reached down and grasped at him. Within seconds he was inside her a
nd she cried out in ecstasy, which in all truth she did not particularly feel at that moment, but Brigid knew what a man needed to hear and she was giving it to him.

  Coming back from Gundaroo Mary O’Rourke saw the horse tethered to the rail and sensibly went back along the path to sit down and wait in the shade of a she-oak for a little doze.

  But each time she ventured along the riverbank again the horse was still there, so she just went back and dozed a little more. No worry, give ’em time. A bit of hanging about now would pay off in the end. A sprat to catch a mackerel!

  Time and again George fell upon Brigid. She cried, she moaned, she hugged and held him close - Brigid held nothing back. While certainly she enjoyed herself, it was nothing compared to the absolute abandon of her lover and his ecstasy.

  Finally exhausted, the shadows lengthening, George lay back and stared up at the drooping bark of the roof.

  Nothing. Nothing in the whole world could be allowed to come between himself and this wonderful experience, this frenzy and perfection. Nothing.

  It was a few weeks later that the little favours began to be requested: some repairs to the roof, a new washtub. And favours have to be repaid. Brigid delighted in their repayment as much as he yearned for every secret rendezvous.

  A wife! Brigid did not waste much time pondering over the question. She’d known quite a few men with wives, they didn’t amount to much and rarely knew what their husbands were up to. A flirtation here, an assignation there, she’d often smiled to herself. She could tell the wives and mothers of Gundaroo a thing or two! Old Mam had trodden that path, but Brigid winced when she looked at the body bloated with childbearing and the hands gnarled from years at the tub. No, if she was going to do better then that she’d steer clear of poverty. She’d find herself a real man, with a real living to offer and she’d deal with the wife later.

  Off and away, there’s bigger fish in the sea than ever came out of it - those had been her words and they echoed around George’s head. He could not let that happen.

  Now he found his wife staring at him. Mary Ann was for the first time really looking at George Brownlow. It wasn’t dismay or distress that he saw in her eyes - it was sheer disgust. The truth was out, he knew she would never trust him again.