Dust of the Land

by J. H. Fletcher

  ‘Which makes that woman the countess. What she always wanted. Much good may it do her.’

  Jenny made tea for the three of them. Her offer to help turned down, Bella sat and watched her mother. She must be getting on for forty but still looked good, hair dark, skin unlined.

  Jenny brought the tray: brown china teapot and milk jug, a slab of fruitcake.

  ‘Cake?’ Luke said. ‘Now I know it’s a special day.’

  ‘An’ why not?’ Jenny said. ‘Not every day your daughter comes back from the dead.’

  They drank the tea and munched the cake.

  ‘Ain’t you supposed to be getting the lines ready?’ Jenny said to her husband. ‘The tide won’t wait, you know.’

  ‘You’re right.’ Luke winked at Bella. ‘Hard life, being a married man.’

  ‘Hard?’ Jenny said. ‘Let me tell you, you never had it so good.’

  But there was warmth between them, and Bella was glad.

  Luke finished his tea, swallowed the last morsel of cake and got to his feet. He took Bella’s hand in his massive paw. ‘You’ll always be welcome ’ere,’ he said.

  He went out and they heard him whistling down the path.

  ‘A good man,’ Bella said.

  ‘The best. I knew him long before I met your dad. He wanted to marry me but I told him no. Then, after you’d gone to live at Ripon Grange, he asked me again. Told me if I turned him down a second time that would be the end of it, so I said yes.’ She smiled. ‘The best thing I could do, the way things were.’

  ‘Why did you send me away?’ Bella asked.

  It was a question she had asked herself a thousand times. Mumma took her hand. ‘To give you a better chance in life than I ’ad,’ she said. ‘The hardest thing I ever done.’

  So that Bella knew the truth and was comforted.

  ‘I guessed the old man was gone,’ Jenny said. ‘He promised me an annuity when you moved to the Grange. Nothing in writing, but he paid it, regular as clockwork. Forty pound a year. It helped a lot, especially in the early days. But there was nuffin this year. He said I could visit you twice a year but they wouldn’t let me past the gate. That woman must’ve given orders. Twice I tried but it weren’t no use, so in the end I gave up. That woman got a lot to answer for. ’Ow did you get on wiv ’er?’

  ‘Not at all.’

  Bella told her about Charles Hardy and Major Lacey, and how she suspected her stepmother had been behind the whole catastrophe.

  ‘If this Charles really cared he’d have tried to contact you some’ow,’ Jenny said. ‘Didn’t he ever phone? Send you a letter?’

  ‘I never heard from him again.’

  ‘Maybe that woman pinched ’is letters. I wouldn’t put it past her. You haven’t thought to get ’old of ’im, now you’re in London?’

  ‘I phoned. They said he was still in Germany. I’ll never believe he didn’t love me, though. I think they sent him away, to get him away from me.’

  ‘All the more reason to try and find ’im.’

  ‘In Germany? I wouldn’t know where to start. Besides, a girl has her pride,’ Bella said.

  ‘And pride goes before a fall. Ain’t that what they say?’

  ‘I wrote to him but never heard. I phoned, as I said, and that didn’t work either. There was nothing else I could do.’

  Mumma was obviously unconvinced but Bella was sure. Losing Charles was the worst thing that had ever happened to her but it did not stop her imagining something even worse: of sacrificing every last shred of pride and dignity, tracking him down somehow and finding that the countess had been right all along and that Charles no longer cared. She doubted she would be able to survive that.

  ‘So now you’re off to Australia?’ Jenny said. ‘I’ll be that sorry to see you go, now we’ve just found each other again, but I’d say it’s the best thing for you. You got no future at Ripon Grange with that woman in charge. There was a time your dad would’ve shown her who was boss, but the war put paid to that. He weren’t never the same afterwards.’

  ‘You have no other children?’

  ‘There was one, but something went wrong. It was stillborn and the doctor said I couldn’t have no more.’ Mumma smiled and patted Bella’s hand. ‘You’re the only one.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Bella said.

  Mumma shrugged. ‘Long time ago. I don’t think on it no more.’

  ‘Are you happy?’

  Mumma looked at her for a minute before answering. ‘I’m settled. Mr Such is a good man. And to find you again, after so long… All in all, I been very lucky.’

  ‘Do you miss him?’ No need to say whom she meant.

  Jenny laughed. ‘I’m a respectable married woman. What would I be doing, missing other men?’

  ‘Not other men,’ Bella said. ‘My father.’

  Jenny smiled a little sadly. ‘I’ll miss him till I die. But ’tweren’t no good, see? We both knew that from the beginning. ’Twas me own fault. Thought if I could make him fall in love with me, it might set me up for the future. Only thing, I never reckoned on falling in love with him, and I did that, too. But it was worth it.’ She stared proudly at her daughter. ‘To see you a proper lady, with that posh accent… It does my ’eart good just to look at you.’

  ‘I want a picture of you to take with me,’ Bella said.

  Jenny went ferreting around, came back with a photo.

  ‘Mr Such took that of me with ’is Box Brownie when we was in Southend last year,’ she said.

  Bella studied it. It showed Mumma on a pier, laughing, hair blown by the wind.

  ‘I’ll take good care of it,’ she said.

  It was getting dark when Bella left. Before she left: ‘He still loves you,’ she said. ‘He told me so.’

  ‘Thank you, dear,’ Mumma said.

  That was all – the past was the past – but it was enough, and Bella was glad she had said it.

  ‘Now remember,’ Mumma said. ‘You want to be ’appy, make sure you’re a woman what does things rather than ’as things done to ’er. Never forget that.’

  Inevitably there was sadness in the leaving but also a sense of joy that, against all the odds, they had found each other again. It was also good to know Mumma had found herself a good man to support her. Bella stared out the window as the train pulled out of Whitstable. Let’s hope I’m so lucky, she thought.

  CHAPTER FOURTEEN

  One warm night, as The Southern Star ploughed its way down the Red Sea, there was a knock on Bella’s cabin door.

  She was almost asleep and the knock came a second time before she roused herself sufficiently to reply.

  ‘Hullo?’

  A man’s voice answered her softly. ‘May I come in?’

  Mr Johnson’s voice. Perhaps there was a problem with the children. Bella switched on the light, climbed out of her bunk and put on a robe. She opened the door. ‘Is something wrong?’

  He did not answer but slipped quickly into the cabin and closed the door behind him. Bella stepped back, drawing the top of the robe together. She had never taken to Mr Johnson; now he was in her cabin and she knew it had nothing to do with the children.

  ‘Can I help you in some way, Mr Johnson?’

  His smile made her skin creep and there was something wrong with his breath. She was frightened and put as much distance between them as she could, the backs of her knees pressing against her bunk.

  ‘No need to be scared,’ he said. There were spit bubbles on his lips. ‘Just a chat.’

  She knew he was lying but would go along with it for the moment, not knowing what else to do. Yet her knees were knocking, her body a-tremble.

  ‘In that case you’d better sit down,’ she said.

  He did not but stood watching her, the same creepy half-smile on his face. He was looking at her breasts. The robe was gossamer-thin and concealed little. She crossed her arms in front of her body.

  ‘You are very beautiful,’ he said.

  ‘Please, Mr Johnson –’

>   ‘I’ve been watching you,’ he said jerkily. ‘Ever since we came aboard.’ His face was shiny with sweat. Bella was no longer frightened; she was terrified.

  ‘Mr Johnson, please… Go back to your cabin. I am sure Mrs Johnson –’

  The mention of his wife galvanised him. ‘Mrs Johnson does not understand me,’ he said. ‘She finds me repulsive. Whereas you, dear Bella –’

  She forced steel into her voice. ‘If you don’t leave this cabin immediately I shall scream. I mean it, Mr Johnson.’

  She doubted anyone would hear above the engine noise but could think of no other way to stop him. It worked; she saw the tension leave him.

  ‘I came to talk.’ He was still breathless but spoke in a more normal voice. ‘If I gave any other impression I am sorry.’

  She stood watching him, her arms still crossed, waiting for him to leave.

  He reached out – the cabin so small that he could touch her without moving – and patted her bare arm quickly. ‘No harm,’ he said.

  Inside her skin Bella’s flesh crawled.

  He went out, treading softly. The door clicked shut behind him. Bella threw herself at the door, locked it after him and stood, gasping for air in the enclosed space, while the world spun and her frantic heart threatened to explode within her.

  Later, tottering like an old woman, she climbed into her bunk and switched off the light. For a long time she lay staring at the darkness while the cabin continued to vibrate with the rhythmic thrust of the engines. She did not know what she should do. Complain? But to whom, and of what? He had barely touched her. Walk out as soon as they reached Sydney? She had no money and no friends. No, she would stay with the Johnsons and see how things developed. And remain – always! – on her guard.

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  In Sydney they boarded a train and headed north.

  Bella had not known what to expect, so there was no way she could be disappointed. Nor was she. Sitting for long hours at the train window she saw space flowing endlessly past beneath a blue and shimmering sky; trees, grey rather than green, watching silently, leaves drooping. The wind blew dust in raging clouds across the distances, obliterating sight. That was the essence, Bella thought. The dust of the land. The wind died; the dust settled. Then the land was as it had been before: silent and watchful, as though it remembered the world long before the arrival of men, knowing it would still be here long after men had gone.

  It would have intimidated many, but Bella was entranced, not by mountains or rushing rivers but the lack of them. Out there, in the emptiness, was a freedom she had never before imagined.

  The smoke blew back from the pounding engine; in the distance dust devils were conjured by the wind. Everything was strange. Why, then, did she feel she had come home?

  Mrs Johnson’s reaction was very different. They had known that Charters Towers was a gold-mining town fallen on hard times, with nothing to show for its past but abandoned workings and mullock heaps on its outskirts, but she looked around her – flared nostrils and sour lips – as though tracking the source of a disagreeable smell.

  ‘I never thought it would be like this,’ she said. ‘The place is derelict. I declare I believe the whole country is derelict.’

  It was a view fuelled partly by weariness from the long journey but her mood did not improve when she saw the house in which they would be living. Bella could see nothing wrong with it – stone-built, with wide verandahs and a view that stretched forever – but it was not at all the sort of residence Mrs Johnson had expected when they had left dear England. There was another problem, too. Mrs Johnson was the proud possessor of a letter of introduction to the governor of Queensland. She had envisaged balls and entertainments in the company of people of her own class, only to find that the governor was based in Brisbane, at the other end of the earth from the unfortunates condemned to life in Charters Towers. Townsville, the nearest real town, was hours away, the road little better than a track. She had been warned that in wet weather even Charters Towers might be accessible only on horseback, and horses had formed no part of Mrs Johnson’s rosy visions of life on the outskirts of the Empire.

  ‘Distances in this country are too vast to be contemplated,’ she said.

  Something for which the people who lived here were naturally to be blamed.

  Mrs Johnson’s feelings about her new home made her an uncomfortable companion, but Bella didn’t let that bother her. She was still determined to move on, the first opportunity she got. How that would happen it was difficult to see, but she watched the lean figures of the cattlemen in the streets of Charters Towers, their confident shoulders and eyes steady beneath their broad-brimmed hats, and sensed that self-reliance was needed for success in this land. She was comfortable with that notion; where she had acquired it she had no idea, but self-reliance was a quality she had in buckets. When an opportunity came, she would take it.

  * * *

  At three o’clock on a hot afternoon five months after their arrival, Bella stood on the verandah of the house with the two Johnson children – Jennifer, aged six, and Angela, two years younger – and watched the biplane circling overhead.

  ‘I never seed an aeroplane before,’ Jennifer said.

  ‘I have never seen,’ Bella corrected automatically. ‘Neither have I.’

  ‘Is it Mr Tucker? Is he going to land? Where will he land?’

  Bella did not know the answers but assumed it was indeed Mr Tucker, because Mrs Johnson had told her he was expected and would be flying his own plane to get here.

  ‘All the way from the Pilbara. Can you imagine it?’

  ‘Where is the Pilbara?’

  Mrs Johnson could not say but knew it was very, very far.

  ‘Like everything else in Australia,’ she sighed. ‘No wonder people need aeroplanes to get about.’

  ‘What do we do if he has a crash?’ Jennifer asked.

  ‘We rescue him.’

  ‘And if we can’t?’

  Jennifer’s endless questions would try the patience of a saint: something Bella had never claimed to be.

  ‘We bury him,’ she said.

  Wide-eyed at the prospect of disaster, the children watched as the biplane banked before putting down, as smooth as silk, on a strip of ground on the far side of the creek that ran below the house.

  ‘It looks as though we won’t have to rescue him after all,’ Bella told them.

  The pilot leapt down from the open cockpit, did something to the wheels of the undercarriage, crossed the bridge spanning the creek and strode towards the house. Bella and the children came down the verandah steps to greet him.

  He was older than Bella had expected: not far off forty, she judged, with dark hair, a sun-tanned face with deep blue laughing eyes and shoulders like a prize fighter. He was wearing disgraceful trousers, oil-stained and torn at one ankle, and a black leather jacket. A tangle of black hair showed in the opening of his checked shirt and a soft leather helmet and goggles swung from his right hand.

  ‘I understand his wife died some years ago. They say he has a terrible reputation,’ Mrs Johnson had said. No need to say what reputation she meant. Looking at him now, Bella could well believe it.

  ‘Mrs Johnson?’ he said. His voice was firm, his accent flat as flat.

  ‘I’m Bella Richmond, the children’s governess. This is Jennifer,’ Bella said, introducing them, ‘and this is Angela.’ She had always believed children should be treated as the people they were.

  ‘How do you do?’ said Jennifer.

  While Angela, over-awed by the stranger from the sky, stared.

  ‘And I am Garth Tucker,’ the man said, and shook both children’s hands solemnly.

  Bella decided she liked him. ‘Mrs Johnson is in town. We were not expecting you until later.’

  ‘I picked up a tailwind,’ he said.

  Bella laughed. ‘Is that supposed to mean something?’

  ‘Only if you’re a pilot.’

  They walked up the verand
ah steps.

  ‘Nice house,’ Garth said, looking around at the vast living room. A Wilton carpet; an elegant chair here; a marquetry desk there.

  ‘Mrs Johnson thinks it’s a hovel,’ Bella said.

  She surprised herself, being so forthright with a stranger, but all of a sudden there the words were, unannounced.

  Maybe I needed someone to confide in, she thought. I must have been more lonely than I knew.

  ‘She should see my place,’ Garth said.

  ‘If it was mine, I would do it differently,’ Bella said.

  ‘Looks good to me,’ Garth said. ‘What would you change?’

  ‘Mrs Johnson likes elegance,’ Bella said. ‘But this is not an elegant house.’

  ‘Not an elegant country,’ Garth said.

  ‘So I would furnish it for comfort, not sophistication.’

  ‘Spit it out,’ Garth said.

  She hadn’t expected to be put on the spot like this but guessed that was Garth’s way. What was the saying? Put up or shut up. Very well, then.

  ‘I’d have rugs, not this carpet. They wouldn’t need to be valuable, as long as they were colourful; I wouldn’t want it to be a house where people had to kick off their boots every time they walked through the door. I’d have big, comfortable chairs, with good cushions.’

  ‘Somewhere to relax after a hard day,’ Garth said. ‘I like it.’

  ‘Shelves overflowing with books.’ She gestured to the long wall facing the window. ‘A huge fireplace; winter nights up here can be cold enough for frost.’

  ‘In other words, comfort,’ Garth said.

  ‘A home and not just a house,’ Bella said. ‘Anyway, that’s how I would do it. But it’s Mrs Johnson’s house.’

  ‘Very interesting,’ Garth said.

  ‘As part of the comfort campaign, I can offer you tea,’ Bella said. ‘Or whisky, if you’d rather.’

  ‘One followed by the other sounds good,’ said Garth Tucker.

  Forty or not, his smile was enough to devastate a whole regiment of women. Not that Bella planned to be one of them.

  She joined him in the tea and brought orange squash for the children, who sat staring like wide-eyed mice at the stranger.