The Noon Lady of Towitta

by Patricia Sumerling

  Willy thought he knew about death. When he shot a galah or a possum, it simply stopped in its tracks and went limp. Bright and glinty eyes glazed over and when he held a creature in his hands to take a closer look, its head hung down and swung freely. As much as he poked them after they were shot or trapped, they would not wake up from this sleep. This is how Pauline appeared to him when she died, just asleep. He poked her and pleaded with her to talk to them but I said she’d gone and that he mustn’t touch her again or try and wake her. She had gone to sleep forever. Yet, if it was just sleep, why couldn’t he wake her?

  Willy and August were pleased they slept in a barn, like most farm boys their age, especially on the night following Pauline’s death. August told me much later that when he and Willy went to sleep in the barn that night, they both wept into their straw mattresses not caring that they could hear each other crying like babies and spurring each other on into louder wails of grief and sobbing. Father always said that boys don’t cry, but they did that night and they didn’t care who heard them. After that they didn’t cry again, not even when Bertha was slain by the strange intruder.

  The boys wanted to discover where a creature went when it died, so they cut them up to try and catch them at the moment when they left the body. Soon after the creatures died, parts of them twitched or throbbed, which baffled the boys. They fell into the habit of cutting up animals they killed and taking out their entrails, at first to inspect them but then because it gave them something to do. When they became more confident of what they were doing, they ran around with bloodied entrails to frighten Bertha.

  There were other aspects of death that neither of them could understand. Mother and Father confused them when talking of Heaven, telling the boys that creatures didn’t go to Heaven like Pauline had because they had no soul. This was a puzzle. Then Mother and Father told them of the hideous place where bad people went. A place named Hell. So August and Willy spent a lot of time wondering which members in the family would go to Hell. I told them, ‘You two will go there if you don’t stop killing innocent creatures.’ But then I confused them further by telling them they need not fear going to Hell because they were already living in it with Father.

  August knew he and Willy weren’t like their older brothers Frederick and Heinrich. When they had been around, life wasn’t quite so bad for August and Willy because Father left them alone while he bullied the older boys. And before the two eldest ran away the four boys had enjoyed good times together. They had teased August and Willy all the time, but in fun. How the younger boys missed their brothers! They showed them how to hunt and kill, to fence, chop wood, and most of all how to keep out of the way of bad-tempered people. Our family was made up of bad moods or cold silences. Horrid things happened in our family. When August and Willy were much older and their big brothers were settled at a cattle station in the far north of South Australia, they returned to rescue them, taking them away on a train to some place in the desert. Later, all the brothers changed their names and spent much of their adult lives in the saddle where they were able to forget their unhappy childhoods at Towitta. Who could blame them?

  Bertha seemed to cause trouble just by being around. She was spirited, and oh so boisterous – cheeky too. She simply got on my nerves. Yet whereas August was clobbered for insolence, as Father called it, she escaped punishment for far more serious acts of disobedience. Pauline seemed able to calm Bertha, August and Willy too, but I seemed to seethe all the time. At times when they talked to me I’d be far away lost in my own thoughts. I laughed a lot when Pauline was alive, but that stopped when she died. Pauline and I had been as thick as thieves, as were Willy and August, and Frederick and Heinrich. But Bertha was on her own.

  After Pauline died the house fell into a stony silence except when someone was losing their temper, which seemed to be a daily occurrence. Bertha tried to move into the space near me made empty by Pauline’s death, but I kept the precocious child at a distance. Bertha thought if she followed me around I’d give in to her. She seemed to want to get inside my thoughts all the time.

  I was the most nervous, even more so than Willy. I was prone to nightmares and sleepwalking. It took a lot of noise to wake Willy and August in the barn, but even they were woken at times by my blood-curdling screams and clung to each other for safety. My nightmares were so frightening that in the hour before bed I paced the floor anxiously. At times Mother and Father would try to calm me down, sometimes by shouting at me, ‘Oh for goodness sake, girl, settle down. Read from the good book and take comfort from it.’

  Mother made me sleeping draughts from her herbal brews during the worse times, but they only made my dreams more vivid. When my sleepwalking was at its worst, Father locked me in the shed for my own safety. I told them the shed breathed like it was alive and full of witches. So although I was prevented from wandering off, August and Willy had to put up with my mournful wailing and sobbing in terror. They sympathised with me because they often frightened each other with those terrifying stories August read from the green book that belonged to Father. They knew what it was to be frightened of the dark.

  Mind you, they loved to hear me telling the fairytales that sprang from my vivid imagination. August thought I not only frightened them to death but probably myself. I relished tales of child-killing monsters and witches that grabbed you in the scrub. When the boys thought they heard mysterious noises in the bush, they became riveted with fear. Other times they simply ran for their lives.

  Why would they doubt me? I told even better stories than Father. But Father said my brand of storytelling would get me into trouble one day, I distorted the truth and took things to extremes. And then the storytelling stopped, I became too sick and had times when I was bed-bound. The boys learned I had the same sickness as Pauline and that I too could die from it, but I knew they wouldn’t cry for me when I died.

  Having lost Pauline Mother insisted she wasn’t going to lose me. She believed I could be cured from consumption by certain concoctions she’d heard about. She wrote to an Adelaide Chinese herbalist named Lum Yow. Some people believed him a Chinese quack. She sent for a recipe and everyday a mixture of turpentine and oil or turpentine and butter was rubbed over my body. It was a revolting smelly mixture and as much as I protested, Mother made sure I rubbed it in well.

  There was another cure-all she made, a kind of pickle of brandy and salt. When Mother insisted on making this brew, Father, who never touched a drop of alcohol, was unhappy about going to the hotel in Sedan to buy a bottle of brandy. But Mother put on a turn about losing another of her daughters to the ‘white plague’ if he didn’t. After her pleas and tears, he drove the buggy to Sedan and stony-faced bought a bottle of the ‘demon drink’. I often wondered what the folks at the bar thought when my father entered to buy a bottle, but apparently the Meyers didn’t bat an eyelid. Mother made me take a tablespoon of this mixture, two or three times a week. A few weeks later, when my health seemed to have improved, she insisted her remedies had worked.

  ‘I swear, Mary, there is a bloom in your cheeks and you have your appetite back.’

  ‘If you say so, Mother.’

  Father responded to my improved health by reminding me of the sin he had committed in going to the pub on my behalf. His pride and dignity were sorely tested and I had to suffer because of it.

  While I could escape into my fantasies or retreat to the peace by one of the creeks, it was a strain when darkness fell and we were shut up in the house together. I guess Mother could no longer stand the tension and misery either, I know I could hardly bear it, so she came to my rescue by securing me a job through her friends in Angaston. She thought it would help me recover from Pauline’s death, but more importantly she wanted me out of Father’s hair as it would calm both our tempers.

  While I had been working in Adelaide, Father had begun building a bigger farmhouse with the extra money I sent home each week. When I returned home he could no longer pay for the materials needed to finish it. This f
rustrated him and I was blamed. Starting work at the Yalumba Fruit Preserve factory meant that Father could finish the half-built structure. I was angry to think that part of my precious hard-earned wage was going toward this when it could have been used by Mother to decorate and furnish the existing house.

  It was in the weeks before I left Towitta to work in Adelaide that my two eldest brothers, Frederick and Heinrich, went to live with our Aunt Giscelia, Father’s sister, in Eden Valley. Mother had come to their rescue, this time claiming that the farm could no longer support them because of the worsening drought conditions, but it was really because of the one and only whipping they had given Father before fleeing.

  Mother was distraught but somehow she had enough gumption to defy Father for she took the buggy and drove to Eden Valley to see Aunt Giscelia to secure a safe refuge for Frederick and Heinrich. She was gone a night and a day and two days after she returned, the two eldest brothers went to live there. Later, they travelled to the far north of South Australia to work on a cattle station. Frederick came back for Bertha’s funeral and later made the journey to Adelaide for my court trial.

  13

  With the older boys and Pauline gone from the farm, there were just four of us children left at home with Mother and Father. Bertha was the youngest at thirteen years. Willy and August had taken over the farm work from the older brothers. Although life at home was at first more peaceful, the two younger brothers now attracted more attention from Father than before. I suppose it was nothing less than bullying. They couldn’t help being how they were, slower than the older brothers at completing chores. Father continually ordered them to hurry. He’d bawl, ‘Get a move on, you potato heads. I want that hay cut today not next week.’

  The boys cowered, fearing Father and his whip, but they were not fast enough to jump out of the way of its stinging lashes as Frederick and Heinrich had been. Although there were now three less mouths to feed, our family of six struggled to survive on a farm that could barely feed one.

  Despite Father’s outburst, when he learned I had taken the job in Angaston he simmered down and allowed me to go. Boarding there with old friends of Mother’s in the week, I travelled home every fortnight or so for the weekend. I hated going home, but I was expected to bring back my wages to help keep the farm going. My life in Angaston was calm and peaceful, and it was a trial to make the regular journeys to Towitta. During a school holiday in the late autumn, a busy period at the factory, Bertha joined me. The factory manager had approached Father on one of his rare visits to Angaston.

  Bertha was well developed and, for one so young, what some would consider forward. She was taller than me and stronger. When the dust was at its worst and invaded our hair, her auburn mane seemed to increase in size resembling a huge boxthorn hedge. It made her look even bigger, older and quite wild. Father always said she was the one who looked most like his father. She looked far older than her years and loved the attention men of all ages gave her, the young daring men openly flirting with her. Who could blame them, she was striking.

  This situation caused me much stress for I was threatened with recall if I couldn’t chaperone Bertha at all times and keep her safe. When gossip from a well-meaning friend reached Father about her flirtations, he threatened to bring us home and thrash me for bringing shame on our family. When Mother’s friend warned Bertha our father knew about her behaviour and about the likely repercussions, Bertha hurriedly sent Father a note to pacify him. Unlike me she knew how to get round him; my brothers and I never had a chance.

  At the Angaston fruit factory I shared my dinner breaks under the trees or a verandah with a small group of unmarried women. Like other factories that employ so many we soon divided into groups. Few of the young women in my group had ever been to Adelaide, so they enjoyed the stories of my adventures. They wanted to know about the family I worked for, a family they had heard about or read about in the social pages of the newspapers. What I wanted more than anything was to share with them stories of the passionate nights I spent with my master, how he held me in his arms and stroked me. But, of course, I did not.

  I told them instead about the master’s flirting, about him trapping us on the stairs and in the corridors. It’s what they expected. They’d heard about this happening to many girls who had gone to work in Adelaide. And so when I told them such things had happened to me, that he caressed my back as I swept the stairs, the girls would clamour, ‘What did you do about it?’

  The girls’ imaginations were stirred up by my stories; they agreed I was the best storyteller they’d known. I remembered Father’s words and told my listeners, ‘The tales are always true and you’d better believe them.’

  My new friends wanted more stories. So at night I would think up a new story for the next day about my life in Adelaide. As you can appreciate, I added details that made even everyday chores sound exciting. Although they were never sure where fiction took over from fact, they were starved of tales about Adelaide and happy to imagine my life in a bustling sinful city. They couldn’t understand what I was doing in Angaston.

  ‘Wouldn’t you rather be in Adelaide?’ they asked.

  ‘Of course I would.’

  I told them that when I was better I expected to return to Adelaide to find another position. Secretly, although I longed to escape there, I knew this was unlikely.

  14

  ‘Tell me of your sweetheart, Mary. How did you meet him? From the photographs in old newspapers at home, I remember him as handsome.’

  Sister Kathleen was keen to know where Gustave came into the story. I had been determined to tell as much as possible of my life story before he appeared. But now the time had come for me to talk of him.

  Well, he was bronzed by the sun and wind and I thought him handsome. I met him while travelling to and from Angaston, up and down Parrot or Accommodation Hill. He was a year younger than me. Bertha had finished her few weeks at the factory, and I was relieved. On the weekend I accompanied her back to Towitta, I remember Gustave showing off to her. He performed tricks with the horses, and told her of his exploits in Adelaide. Of course she listened intently, smiling and catching his eye.

  Gustave Nitschke was a delivery boy who worked for the Schwanefeldts. They were local traders in Sedan with business premises in Adelaide. He would do the rounds of nearby towns and travel to Adelaide about once a fortnight, staying overnight in Carrington Street with relatives of his employer. I often rode home with him when he was going to Sedan. He would turn off the main road and drop me close to the farm before heading through Towitta back onto the main road. Often there were other passengers who paid a shilling or two for the lift.

  These journeys took several hours so it was a pleasant opportunity to talk with people one wouldn’t otherwise have the chance to speak with. I admired the way Gustave handled the six spirited chestnut and bay horses as I sat up beside him and looked along their sweating backs. He handled them with no harshness or cruelty, with hardly a touch of a whip. When he stopped to give them a rest they looked for his soothing words, titbits and the stroking of their heads. I think it was his kindness and genuine affection for these powerful but gentle creatures that first attracted me to him.

  For several journeys we didn’t speak, then one day he asked me, ‘Miss Schippan, has the cat stolen your tongue?’

  ‘Not at all, Mr Nitschke. I barely know you.’

  ‘Well you should by now. We’ve travelled together several times, hours spent without a word. You can’t sit there in silence any longer. It’s quite nerve racking, you know.’

  This broke the silence and we began to exchange niceties. I considered him brazen, but I couldn’t resist being friendly. He was a sunny kind of person and it wasn’t long before we were drawn to each other. It was a long journey after all, and it was difficult to meet suitable young men in such an isolated place.

  I liked it best when Gustave and I travelled alone. When the weather was fair and there was just us, he would stop at the top of the tr
eacherous hill with miles of stone walls before the long descent to Towitta and Sedan. He’d tether the horses and we’d go and sit behind a stone wall and gaze at the countryside spread out far below us like a patchwork quilt; different hues of brown or gold in summer and greens and smoky blues in the winter. There was nothing remarkable in the landscape other than the changing colours, and because nothing stood out on the river flats that could create a relief in the landscape, not a shadow fell.

  It was on one of these picnics hidden in the long grass in perfect weather that we became lovers. In the winter wind and rain the journey could be treacherous and miserable despite the canvas hood erected for such weather. No matter how bad the weather was, if we were alone we stopped somewhere for an hour or sometimes more. In the covered wagon we made a warm cosy love nest despite the wind howling overhead or a rare downpour of rain.

  I was impatient for these breaks when we could be together, looking down onto the flats. We would eat our picnic of fresh crusty bread, cheese and pickled dill cucumbers on an old tarpaulin. The times when we were alone together were rare but we knew how to share in the passion we had found.

  Towards the end of the year we were officially a courting couple and Gustave and I made plans for leaving the Murray Plains for good before the heat of summer arrived. He heard about a job that would soon be vacant as a driver for one of the many carrier companies in the city. I had Mrs Waters’ reference to help me find another servant’s position in the city. We would be able to save enough money to settle down and have our own family. I was over the age of consent and not even Father could stop me. Yet he tried, saying how much Mother relied on me at weekends. He knew how to generate guilt.

  On one of these stops I was lying on the tarpaulin. Gustave stood in front of me in rolled-up shirtsleeves with an open neck and a long juicy grass stem in his mouth. ‘What about if we leave here and go to Adelaide at the end of November before it gets too hot,’ he suggested. ‘I already have enough money saved for when we live there. I have been saving for years, you know.’