The Noon Lady of Towitta

by Patricia Sumerling

  In the weeks leading up to Bertha’s death our family was not managing at all well. Mother and Father had been invited by Mother’s family in Eden Valley to spend some days with them immediately after Christmas. They weren’t keen to go as they had so little in the way of gifts and food to take with them, but Mother’s brother had insisted. To lessen the number of extra mouths turning up to be fed Father had insisted that he and Mother would go on their own. The four of us, Willy, August, Bertha and me, would stay behind to run the farm. It was a way of saving face with the rest of the family.

  As you can imagine we were bitterly upset about this turn of events. We knew our aunt, uncle and cousins were always happy to see us all. And of course we were looking forward to seeing them. We knew that had we gone we would just share whatever we had, because that’s what we had done in the past. We had always managed to make a few provisions stretch a long way, a bit like the sharing of the loaves and fishes, which made us feel hearty and full of goodwill. But it was not to be that year, for we were so poor. It was the first time we missed this much-anticipated family event. But for Father’s pride, Bertha would still be alive.

  Families generally only came together at Christmas. Now there was nothing to look forward to. Even the prospect of seeing Gustave did not fill me with excitement since he had started making excuses about us not going to Adelaide. To add to the general situation I was feeling unwell over Christmas. It was exceptionally hot with temperatures well over a hundred degrees. The heat, disappointment at not spending Christmas with Mother’s family, my consumption and the uncertainty of Gustave’s affections for me all contributed to my lethargy and misery.

  There was the added disappointment of not being allowed to attend the annual New Year’s Eve dance at the Sedan Institute as Mother and Father could not provide a chaperone. Gustave, who may have been considered, was in Adelaide. The stinging attacks on me by both brothers and Bertha because I would not defy our parents’ orders did not help my mood. To be twenty-four and left in charge of the farm, yet not be allowed to take them to the dance, was the last straw. I could see bad feeling in the days ahead.

  Bertha made a real scene in the afternoon before the dance and throughout the following day. She would not let it rest. Perhaps she had told a young man that she’d meet him there. She was making threats and making a nuisance of herself and by the time she went to bed that evening, I was at the end of my tether.

  Before Mother and Father left we ate a miserable Christmas lunch of scraggy roast mutton and a soggy steam pudding. Father made it clear that this year we could not afford to make the usual festival cakes and biscuits and other Christmas trimmings, and we didn’t bother with a Christmas tree. There were no treats on Christmas Day and Willy, August and Bertha were bitterly disappointed. After all they were only children.

  The boys had helped me catch and slay two sheep for the festivities, mean, skinny animals. When we caught them the boys pretended to have difficulty holding the animals down, so the animals struggled and got free several times before I was able to hold them still enough to slit their throats. I did it in rage and the blood sprayed the clothes I intended wearing for the few days over Christmas. I made no effort to spruce myself up for the occasion as I was past caring.

  As soon as Mother and Father departed the boys disappeared with their guns and Bertha hung around like a blowfly and pestered me. ‘Mary, why can’t we go to the dance? Everyone we know will be there. It’s not fair. Mother and Father will never know and we’ll behave ourselves.’

  ‘I keep telling you, Father says we can’t go and that’s the end of it. Stop your silliness. Someone will tell on us if we go, you can be certain of that. Besides, it is not proper for us to come back in the dark without a chaperone. What would people think? You know how they talk about the most trivial of things.’

  ‘But, Gustave could take us. What’s wrong with that?’

  ‘You know that can’t be. He’ll be in Adelaide then and anyway I can’t be seen to be going home with him unless we are officially engaged. People would talk about it being improper.’

  She smirked, ‘Well it is really, isn’t it?’

  ‘Whatever do you mean, young miss?’

  ‘It’s what you and he do in the barn, or even in Towitta Creek. I’ve seen you.’

  I was outraged, ‘Now look here, he and I are going to get married one day and we’re sort of engaged.’

  ‘So when you’re engaged you can do all that kissing and cuddling and those things that parents do? What would Mother and Father think if I told them?’

  ‘You just dare, Bertha. When you’re grown up, you’ll know this is what engaged couples like to do. Now be off with yourself. Go and play with the Henke girls for a while. I know Ella and Violet are expecting you to go and see them today. Go and see what Christmas was like for them. They may even give you a present.’

  ‘You only want me to go because Gustave’s coming this afternoon, like he did yesterday.’

  ‘So what? I don’t want you about while he’s here, we have important things to discuss. Just go away and leave me in peace.’

  Bertha wore me out with her banter and my mood was not improved when Gustave arrived that Sunday afternoon. He followed me around while I did jobs around the farm. He pleaded with me to stop working and pay more attention to him. I declared I would not stop until the chores were done or until he had given me a date for our betrothal. He was still there in the evening when Bertha was around to hear what was said. The more I pleaded with him to name a date, the more he made excuses as to why he wouldn’t do so until he returned from Adelaide in the following week. I rejected his amorous advances but he wouldn’t be deterred and before I knew it, I lost myself to his sweet caresses. And he promised to name our betrothal date when he returned from Adelaide. Then he was gone and I was left with my siblings in utter misery.

  New Year’s Eve came and went and the sour moods continued into the next day, the first day of the new year. That night Bertha went to bed in a huff and hid under the bedclothes. Half an hour after Bertha flounced off to bed, I was just about to go when Willy and August came home. I waited until they had eaten their tea and cake and let them take the only working lamp to their room in the barn. I still felt under the weather and was exhausted from the strain of being in charge and I longed for an early night. Unusually there wasn’t even a breeze that night and the silence and pre-moon blackness were eerie. The candles had burned down to stumps, we had planned to make a stack of new ones when Mother and Father returned. In the meantime we had to make do with just the one lamp the brothers took with them.

  After the boys left with the lamp, I tried to make amends to Bertha by announcing that it was time for a fairytale in the pitch dark. It could be a cautionary tale, the story of what could happen to those who don’t behave. The message to Bertha concerned the trouble that would come her way if she continued to flirt with the boys, especially my sweetheart Gustave. It was also a way for me to let off steam about Father. The stories of Sneewittchen (Snow White) and Aschenputtel (Cinderella) were oft-told ones but I could make them more frightening than most people. That night, impatient and irritated with Bertha, I frightened her with ‘How children play butcher’, which we often acted out.

  The tale was about two children playing together. One pretended to be the butcher and the other one the pig. In the story, the brother playing the butcher was so carried away that he picked up his father’s knife lying near the woodpile and grabbed hold of his younger brother. Pulling his head back by his hair, he slit his throat from ear to ear. His mother looked out the window at that moment and saw the little brother twitching and bleeding as he lay dying.

  Horrified at what she saw, she ran from the house leaving her toddler daughter in a tin bath. Taking the knife from her son she stabbed him, leaving the two dead sons as she returned to the house to find her little girl had drowned. Full of remorse that her three young children were dead, she grabbed a rope from the woodshed and hanged
herself. When her husband came home from hunting and found his entire family gone, he was so distraught that he shot himself dead.

  We always worked ourselves to fever pitch as we acted out this grim story and that is how we were on the night I terrified Bertha with the knife, intending to act out the butcher’s role. At first she was keen for, like the rest of us, she enjoyed a creepy bedtime story, but then in the total darkness and in my sour and miserable state I became carried away, and she fled back to her bed startled. When I realised what was happening I went outside to recover. I was frightened that what little sisterly affection I may have felt for Bertha had vanished and that I actually wanted to kill her. I sat outside to calm my breathing, listening to the crickets and waiting for the murderous mood to pass. It took some time but then, thinking I had recovered, I went back inside to prepare myself for bed. I had removed my skirt and blouse and climbed into bed and was almost asleep when Bertha blurted out, ‘I’ve got a secret, Mary. A secret concerning your sweetheart, Gustave.’

  She had been as cross with me over the Christmas period as I was with her and probably now, more so, because I’d frightened her. I had grown weary of her insolence of the last two days and I realised now that I hadn’t recovered at all from my murderous mood. I shouted into her face, ‘What are you saying?’

  ‘Well, you won’t sit on the sofa and spoon with Gustave anymore. I heard from Mrs Matschoss today that you no longer have a sweetheart. So, you’ll just have to make do with me now.’

  ‘What are you talking about, what have you heard?’

  ‘I can’t tell you more, it’s supposed to be a secret and I’ll get into trouble if I tell you. Anyway, I don’t want to say more. You’ve scared me so much that I never want to hear your horrid butcher stories again. And that’s what you are, a butcher!’

  I couldn’t see her but I leaned over the bed and grabbed hard at her hair and said, ‘You’d better tell me what you’ve heard about Gustave, Bertha, or I will truly hurt you.’

  ‘No,’ she protested, ‘I won’t. You’re scaring me.’ I pulled harder.

  ‘All right,’ she screamed, ‘let go and I’ll tell you.’ She took a breath, ‘Mrs Matschoss told me this afternoon that Gustave has had a fiancée for months, but they aren’t telling anyone until she turns eighteen at her next birthday. When they’ve told her father, they’ll get married later this year. So you see, he can’t marry you too, can he? He can’t really be your sweetheart if he’s already promised to marry someone else. And you’ll never guess who it is?’

  My mind was in a whirl. I couldn’t imagine how Gustave could have found time to court another sweetheart as he was always travelling to and from Adelaide. I needed to know more. I grabbed her by the hair again and shouted, ‘Right, you little hussy, just tell me or I’ll really be the butcher.’

  ‘All right, all right, I’ll tell, but please, let go, you’re hurting me.’ She hesitated before adding, ‘It’s one of his boss’s daughters, the prettiest one called Clare. She’s the youngest.’

  Before I had time to say anything, she continued in a sneering manner, ‘And I know what Gustave’s been doing here the last few nights – and at weekends too. I know what you’ve been doing but I bet Father doesn’t. He’ll be so angry when he finds out what’s been going on under his roof.’

  ‘What do you intend telling him? What are you talking about? You’re just saying this because you’re still angry I wouldn’t let you go to the dance or to Adelaide with Gustave. You really can’t think that I’d let a young slip of a girl like yourself go all the way to Adelaide with someone like Gustave. It’s not done, Bertha. Everyone would talk.’

  But Bertha, feeling she had the upper hand, said, ‘You know that’s not the only reason. You’re just jealous about the times he’s taken me to Sedan in the past and you couldn’t come too. When he asked me to go to Adelaide, even if he didn’t mean it, you couldn’t bear that either. When he said I was pretty, I let him kiss me right on the lips.’

  At this last remark I leaned across once more and grabbed for her hair in the dark and slapped her face hard. ‘You are lying, Bertha. Gustave would never say such a thing to a girl so young.’ I’d never hit her like that before but she responded by laughing, and then screamed back at me, ‘You old witch, well it won’t make any difference what you do now, because he can’t marry you. And you’re only worried that you’ll be left holding the baby. I know that’s what you’re arguing about. Perhaps you’d better marry the local hawker quick because he’s about your age,’ she screamed. ‘You’re old, Mary Schippan, old!’

  What little control I ever had snapped at this point and another me, from deep inside, took over. My face burned and the blood rushed to my head. Before I knew it I’d rushed to the kitchen and grabbed the largest butchering knife shouting, ‘I’ll get you, my girl!’

  Bertha’s laughing became hysterical and she climbed out of bed and taunted me, ‘Come on then, get me if you can, Mr Butcher, just like in the fairytale. You know you want to do it. You’ve been acting for months like you wanted to do it for real.’ And I heard her run after me into the kitchen while making the noises of a squealing pig about to be slaughtered. And she was shouting at me, ‘You’ll have to stay in Towitta for ever now with Father because you’re too old to find anyone else to marry.’

  The rising moon suddenly appeared briefly from behind the clouds and before it disappeared again I caught a glimpse of her outline in the dark as she passed a window. I saw her eyes flash like a pig’s, I heard the squeal, and I snapped. Like the child in the tale acting the butcher, I knocked her forward and heard her fall. And like the butcher with a difficult pig to slaughter, I plunged the long-bladed knife deep into the back of her neck before she had time to recover. She turned and leapt at me and hung on me like a limpet, her nails managing to savagely claw at my hair and my arms. Sticky with her blood, I tried to unclasp her as she began screaming for Willy and August.

  Her dullard brothers, whom I had known to sleep through gales and thunderstorms, would never hear her screams from their barn beds a hundred feet away. My head throbbed as Bertha pulled at my hair, kicking and screaming. She was far stronger than me as she fought for her life while screaming, ‘He won’t marry you now. You’ll just become an old witch, Mary Schippan.’ I was blind with rage and all the time she laughed, taunting me still and following me into our parents’ bedroom.

  Then suddenly the laughing stopped and I heard her slump to the floor in the pitch darkness. She laughed just once more, but stopped as though gagged and then there was silence. I felt about to find her stretched out on the floor on her stomach. I pulled her head up by her hair and, putting the knife into my cutting hand, I slashed her from ear to ear with my best pig and sheep-cutting strokes, I don’t know how many times.

  Sister Kathleen was silent when I paused. ‘Are you all right, shall I go on?’ Although she looked stunned and her voice wavered, she answered, ‘Yes, don’t stop now.’

  I say it all happened like this for I can only think that’s what must have happened. Or perhaps it was a nightmare and someone else did it. I don’t know. What I knew was Bertha lying there, in the bedroom, unmoving. Surely not my little sister.

  The night was still except for chirping crickets. I sat down for a few minutes and collected my thoughts. I stung from the scratches on my legs and arms and where the blade of the knife had nicked my shoulder. My head ached from where hair must have been pulled out by Bertha. And it was as I was sitting there that I realised what I had just done. I had just killed my sister like she was a pig over a silly squabble. I was terrified at what I had done. I will be hanged, I thought. Yet, I wasn’t really sure that I had done anything. What happens now, what will I do? I had to invent something plausible for the brothers, but what? Think, Mary, think.

  I calmed my nerves and as I did so I could see that it was now lighter outside than in. I could now see Bertha lying on her stomach with her arms outstretched. As if mocking me, the soft and silvery moon
that had been hiding behind one of the barns rose above it and began streaming through the window onto the bloody scene. It shone on the knife on the floor in the kitchen. I stepped in warm sticky blood as I picked it up and walked around in my damp stockinged feet clutching the knife trying to find a place to hide it. I went through the front door, and stretching up toward the thatch roof I drove the knife deep under the thatch. At the pump I took off my stockings and other underclothes to rinse them. I washed my face and hands sticky with blood and plunged my head under the pump to rinse my hair. The night air was stifling and it would dry in minutes. I then redressed in my wet clothes and walked around the yard under the moonlight until they had dried.

  All this time the old dog that was tethered by a chain some yards from the house had not stirred from his sleep. Nor had any sound come from the barn where the boys slept. I realised I had to convince my brothers that a stranger had come into the house. Yes that would do. I’d invent an unknown intruder, like the goblin in my nightmares. I dressed in my blouse and old skirt and I ran around the yard, working myself into a hysteria that, after what I had just been through, wasn’t difficult. I then ran to the barn where I shouted for August and Willy. They didn’t stir and so I shook them. ‘What’s the matter, Mary?’

  ‘Quick. One of you will have to go to Henkes’. There’s a strange man in the house, he’s got a knife and Bertha’s in there and I don’t know what’s happening. Oh hurry up, August. I’ll stay here with Willy until you return.’

  Willy was terrified at the thought of a dangerous man on the loose and began crying. I told him to keep quiet until August returned and that we had to sit in the dark in case the stranger came looking for us. I deliberately stirred up his fear.

  August returned without Mr Ferdy Henke, who had refused to come, believing we were concocting a story. So armed with rakes and stakes and a gun we marched over to the house. On reaching the back door we lost our nerve and instead set off to Alf Lambert’s house. The local constable lived almost a mile away. By this time Willy was almost hysterical with fright but I tried to comfort him in the best way I could.