Wild Lands

by Nicole Alexander

  ‘But why are you leaving if there’s trouble?’ Kate had begun to run after him.

  ‘Does a man no good to sit around and wait for it.’ He spurred the mare and rode away.

  At the kitchen hut, Kate upended the fruit on the table. Breathless and unnerved by the altercation with Betts and what she’d learnt from Mr Southerland, she approached the cook, hoping for a friendly ear, needing a friendly ear. ‘Mrs Horton, I just saw –’

  ‘What’s the matter with you then and where have you been? Lift your chin, girl. I don’t have time for your worries. I’ve plenty of me own.’ The cook was quick to complain about the length of time Kate had been away, about the Missus needing water for a bath and the fact that there was barely enough fruit to fill the corner of her eye. ‘Where’s the rest of the fruit? Eat it, did you? Haven’t I told you to eat a morsel before sun-up? Always you’re shaking your head when I pass you a bit of bread. Saying the heat’s too much. That you can only eat in the cool of a night. Then you go gobbling up the Missus’s jam. You’ll get in plenty trouble for that. Stealing, it is. Taking what isn’t yours.’

  ‘Maybe the blacks ate the fruit. I got what I could,’ Kate replied stiffly. She couldn’t deal with the cook’s niggling. Not this morning.

  ‘Maybe they did. Wouldn’t be the first time. What are you looking so wan about, eh, Jelly-belly? It’s not as if you’ve been in here, a-stoking the fire.’ Roughly chopping two irregularly shaped onions, the cook dropped them in the iron pot over the cut rabbit pieces and added some dried herbs. ‘Well, don’t mind me. Get that fruit in a pot, add a handful of mixed peel from the herb shelf along with two cups of water. Put it on to simmer. Don’t add the sugar yet, girl. I’ll do that. It’s the Missus’s birthday today so I don’t want any tongue-wagging from you. And don’t forget to fetch the glass covers for the candles from the Missus’s rooms. Them smelly tallow candles smoke more than a chimney, they do, and filth, well, I wash more cleaning rags here than me own clothes. Come on, hurry up. Sometimes I don’t know why the Kables haven’t sent you to the Female Factory, I really don’t. You’re more curse than blessing, more hindrance than help, more –’

  ‘Stop it! Just stop it, Mrs Horton.’ Kate’s voice trembled. She closed her eyes tightly.

  The older woman was breaking up day-old bread to make crumbs for the rabbit dish. ‘It’s the heat in here. Makes a person giddy, it does.’ She pointed a grubby finger at Kate’s bodice. ‘Cut them bones out of your bodice, lass. There’s not much needs holding in and you’ll take the air a lot better. Cut me own bones out years ago, I did. What’s the point, I thought, killing a great bloody fish to keep a woman’s innards tight?’ Mrs Horton sprinkled the crumbs over the rabbit and added a cup of water. ‘It’s the men what did it. Stop us from running about too much. Keep us meek, pliable. Well, I was onto them. ’Course the swells don’t agree. Saw the Missus’s catalogue from London what came with you. They got boned stays that you’re laced into now. Truss you up like a turkey. The Missus is ordering two, one for her and one for young Sophie. The menfolk will be liking it. Lace ’em tight and keep ’em quiet. That’s what they’ll be saying.’ The cook tucked a thin strand of hair underneath her mob cap and with a large wooden spoon scraped out two servings of rendered sheep fat from a ceramic dish and dolloped the lard onto the rabbit. ‘Well, go on. Mr Callahan fetched a barrel of water from the creek. There’s buckets outside. The Missus is waiting.’

  With the buckets filled, Kate carried them to the Hardys’ house. The door was open.

  ‘Where have you been, Jelly-belly?’ Sophie chastised. ‘Mother’s been waiting.’

  ‘Good morning, Mrs Hardy.’

  Kate emptied the water into the hip bath that had been set up in the middle of the room, which served as drawing, breakfast and dining room. The bath was placed on a brightly coloured rug and beside it sat Mrs Hardy, fanning herself with an old newspaper. The older woman didn’t speak, electing instead to watch as Kate trundled back and forth across the tamped dirt floor, carting enough water so that she could bathe. By the time Kate had finished and the bath was full there was a trail of mud across the room where she’d slopped the water.

  Mrs Hardy nodded to Sophie. The girl dropped two herb sachets in the water.

  Kate drew a chair to the open door and sat down to a wintery view of the valley. Her role in these proceedings was to stand guard in case Mrs Hardy’s ablutions were unwantedly disturbed, and the quiet allowed Kate the luxury of daydreams. Last night she’d dreamt of Major James Shaw, and his blond-headed presence had been a most welcome distraction. Kate wondered what he was doing and if he ever thought of her. Probably not. It was easy to be friendly towards a currency lass when the likelihood of seeing her again was slight.

  ‘The water’s a dreadful murky colour and it smells. You should have added a little rainwater.’

  Kate swivelled in her chair. ‘The creek is low, I think, and our water is down to four barrels, Mrs Hardy. We can’t spare it for such –’

  ‘Indulgences?’ The woman finished the sentence and with her daughter’s assistance removed her shift and stepped into the hip bath. Sophie began to soap her mother’s shoulders, rubbing her neck with a flannel. ‘Sophie, I would like to talk to Kate alone.’

  ‘But I always –’

  ‘Go.’

  The girl left the hut, each step a stamp on the verandah floorboards that vibrated throughout the dwelling. She poked out her tongue at Kate on the way.

  ‘If the wind changes it will stay like that,’ Kate said softly.

  Sophie scowled. ‘You don’t know anything, Jelly-belly.’

  ‘I know you have lessons soon. Best you ready for them.’

  ‘Bring your chair over here, Kate.’

  Kate wondered if the woman expected her to take up where her daughter had left off. If so, she would be disappointed. The last person Kate had washed was her mother’s body after she’d died, and Kate wasn’t inclined to wash anyone, dead or alive, again.

  ‘For one so outspoken you are prim,’ Mrs Hardy commented as Kate positioned her chair at a slight angle, facing away from the bath and its occupant. The level of the brown water sat at the woman’s waist, her knees protruding. A piece of wet muslin was draped across Mrs Hardy’s chest for propriety’s sake. ‘I wasn’t always so useless.’ Her breasts wobbled as she searched for the dropped soap.

  Kate did her best to keep her eyes averted although she couldn’t help but notice that the woman looked ill.

  ‘When we first arrived I did everything that you do now. It was difficult. Very difficult. It is not what I imagined. To work like a scullery maid. To dig holes into an unyielding ground. I have done my best. But it is too much, I have not the strength. My health is not as it was and so I contain myself to keeping an observant eye on the rabbit hutch, on the health of the vegetables, on my small family.’ The woman looked at her nails. ‘I’d thought once of growing vines.’ She wiped the flannel across the wedge of homemade soap and delicately rubbed her neck. ‘I find the heat quite suffocating. I’m glad for the winter. A cold bath is far more invigorating.’

  In spite of the loneliness she was sure Mrs Hardy experienced as well, the woman was at pains to keep Kate at arm’s length. She’d not been asked to sit at the rickety table and share conversation since the day of her arrival. Although, in fairness, there was little time to be idle. The closest Kate came to familiarity was at bathtime, as designated water carrier and guardian, then Mrs Hardy talked. Otherwise the hut was quite out of bounds unless Kate was serving at table, cleaning the house or the silver. Both of which were done every second day, such was the dust.

  A carriage clock ticked on the stone mantelpiece, the bath water splashed as the bather washed a leg, resting a cream thigh over the edge of the bath. The timber walls of the three-roomed hut had been plastered with a thin layer of mud and then newspapers. Needlework, images of flowers, were tacked onto the walls for decoration and the shelves held a mismatch of things: candles, gl
asses, books and a teapot. Swatches of material curtained windows that were mere holes with wooded shutters. Mrs Hardy had done her best to bring a touch of the feminine to the wilds.

  ‘Some nights I dream of London, the foggy mists, the cool, cool air and the green, the grass is a true green, not this washed-out version. My sons are over there, studying. One day they will be great men. Look at my hands, ruined, my face ruined. Truly this land has the most abominable weather.

  ‘My mother cleansed her face morning and night with equal parts Milk of Magnesia, paraffin oil and witch-hazel. It’s very refreshing and fortifying for the skin, she –’

  Mrs Hardy turned her head ever so slowly to stare at Kate. ‘I should order some perhaps. Will you run to the store?’ She gave a brief laugh. ‘I have a list of things to be ordered. Such huge quantities I brought with me on arrival. It wasn’t enough. Everything ran out. Six months, seven months and still I think of things that would make life easier: correspondence, a glass of milk, the newspapers. I wish the sheep would grow their wool faster for then Mr Southerland would journey southwards with my list. You should make one too, Kate. Things you need. It’s all about need here, not want. I wonder how I used to fret over a pretty hat or a piece of lace.’ She looked upwards. A length of canvas was swathed across the bark roof from corner to corner. A ceiling of sorts. ‘I’d like a decent house with glass windows. Mr Hardy promises to secure the necessary materials, but he’s no craftsman.’ There’d been little progress made on the additions to the house although the fence was now completed and floorboards had been put down in the Hardys’ bedroom.

  Withdrawing her leg from the bath’s edge, Mrs Hardy stuck out the other. Kate noticed the limb was swollen from the knee down. It was as if the pustular boil, having left the woman’s face, had travelled south.

  ‘When will the wool be ready for market?’ It was difficult not to stare at Mrs Hardy’s toenails, which were long and yellow.

  ‘July or August. Mr Southerland is in charge of such things.’

  A return to Sydney more than tempted. The hardships of the journey north were all but forgotten, save the killing of the native. That would never leave her. Kate thought of the fig tree in the Reverend’s garden, of scowling Madge. Certainly there would be other schools requiring teachers, and employers that would pay her.

  ‘I envy you. As a currency lass you are bred of this land and are naturally used to its demands. Hard work never hurt a person, Kate, though I know you resent it.’

  ‘It’s not what I expected.’

  ‘You hoped for better things.’ Mrs Hardy nodded in understanding. ‘I thought I knew where I was travelling to, but self-sufficiency does not come easily to everyone. My one consolation is that the evenings do bring simple pleasures. To sit and sew, my daughter at my side while Mr Hardy reads by the light of his brass candlesticks, well, it is difficult to explain.’

  ‘I shared such a childhood with my own parents,’ Kate replied. ‘Novels, books of travel and history.’ It was a pleasure to talk of these things again.

  The older woman wrung out the wash cloth and dabbed the material across her face and neck. ‘Really? You are quite learned, aren’t you? And what of the bible?’

  ‘I am not a reader of it, no. I fail to see the devotion to one who has made the world a misery for so many. If God did create the world, and man and woman, why did he then create illness, snakes and spiders? Why do some people starve and children die young?’

  ‘Enough, Kate.’ The woman dropped her hand in the water irritably. ‘Your Reverend certainly achieved very little in enlightenment where you are concerned. I would suggest not speaking this blasphemy in front of my husband. We are a God-fearing family and suffer daily from the lack of ministrations from a goodly servant of Our Lord.’

  There was little point in quarrelling on the subject. The need to believe in something larger than one’s life provided guidance and support for many, although Kate imagined most prayers went unanswered.

  ‘Among all of us you look the better since your arrival. You have lost the puppy fat you carried and are far more amenable, or perhaps I have been too self-absorbed. In any case you know how much work is required of you. There is scant time for anything else.’ Mrs Hardy rested her back against the bath, her eyes becoming heavy-lidded. ‘You don’t like me, do you? Don’t answer that. If we were in Sydney I would simply expect my due deference. But it takes time to understand that things are different out here.’

  There were plenty of things that Kate could have said in response as to why she had every right to dislike the Hardys. ‘You forget, Mrs Hardy, I am the daughter of a free settler. And I am not used to this place either, nor its hardships. I still sleep on the floor.’

  The woman sat upright, revealing sagging breasts beneath the sheer cloth. She grimaced as if in pain. ‘Yes, you have complained often enough. Well then, you should have a bed at least. I shall speak to my husband about the building of one for you. Tell me,’ she asked thoughtfully, ‘where do your thoughts on marriage stand now?’

  ‘You are here through marriage, I here for the lack of it. I could ask you the same thing,’ Kate answered quietly.

  ‘You are a most exasperating young woman. I didn’t send Sophie away so that you and I could argue. I am ill. It has been a gradual thing, starting with some pain but it grows worse by the day. I wanted to know if you had any skill with healing, if your mother had been so inclined.’

  ‘Only the barest, I’m sorry to say. It is your leg? May I?’

  The older woman nodded and Kate pushed the skin in a number of spots on the swollen limb. The mark of her finger remained, an indentation in the puffy flesh.

  ‘It’s dropsy, isn’t it?’

  ‘I believe so. I have seen it a number of times but never treated it,’ she hastened to add. ‘Rest, I believe, and raising the leg may help drain the fluid.’

  ‘Yes, I have a medicinal and pharmacological tome that suggests it is indeed dropsy, but my leg is not the only part affected. My stomach grows distended.’

  ‘Perhaps you are with child?’ Kate suggested.

  ‘My courses ceased last year.’ Mrs Hardy placed her leg back within the confines of the hip bath. ‘The blacks killed my baby through fright and made me barren.’ Her voice drifted. ‘Dropsy can be fatal?’

  How should she reply? People did die of dropsy, but whether it was the actual swelling of the limb or some other unrecognised problem was beyond Kate. ‘I really don’t know. Have you had the ailment long?’

  ‘Long enough. I grow breathless and exhausted whether doing the simplest of tasks or in bed at night.’

  They were beyond the ministrations of a doctor, of a hospital, although the limited exposure Kate had with these institutions suggested that more people went in than came out. In spite of Mrs Hardy’s condescension, Kate felt sorry for her.

  ‘Mr Hardy expects me to sit down to a feast of rabbit for my name day.’ Her words trailed. ‘We have had a shabby beginning, you and I, Kate Carter, but I would ask you not to tell a soul of this.’

  ‘Surely your husband should be informed? I know he would want you to seek advice. To return to Sydney.’

  ‘Perhaps, but no-one will be journeying south until the sheep are shorn and the wool is ready for market. It will be a chance to recoup some of the monies outlaid on this venture. This is a vital time for us, Kate. For all of us, and he can’t spare men to take me to Sydney, not now, especially with the current problems.’

  ‘The natives.’

  She nodded somberly. ‘Mr Southerland arrived with news last night that there are continued small uprisings. The mounted troops will not be coming to our aid this time. It seems that although we have leased acreage, and used our savings to settle in this unfathomable land, having gone beyond the designated nineteen counties we must look to our own to protect us. Imagine. Men were killed last year and they leave us on our own.’

  ‘But haven’t some of the natives been killed as well?’

 
Their conversation was interrupted by the sounds of approaching horses. Mrs Hardy sat upright, the water sloshing. Kate’s hand felt for the pistol in her skirt pocket as she ran to the open door. ‘It’s Mr Hardy. Mr Southerland rides with him and another. A man I have not seen before.’

  ‘A visitor? Heavens, and here am I bathing.’ Her voice trembled with excitement. ‘We’ve not had a visitor since, well, we never have. Fetch my robe, Kate, and help me out of this infernal contraption, then run and tell Cook we have a guest. She must do her best to provide.’

  Kate placed the robe around Mrs Hardy’s shoulders as she rose and assisted her from the hip bath, then walked outside to the verandah, closing the door firmly behind her. She too was excited to see who had arrived. The men drew up abruptly, their coat-tails dragging across their horses’ rumps as they dismounted. The animals nickered softly, dropping their heads to feed.

  ‘I will show you the map.’ Mr Hardy stomped up onto the verandah. Ignoring Kate he kicked the door open and went inside.

  Kate retreated to the side of the hut. Inside fervent whispering could be heard between husband and wife. By the looks on the faces of the waiting men they wouldn’t be sitting down to enjoy tea and johnny-cakes. Mr Southerland was stuffing his pipe intently, while the other man’s hands were placed firmly on wide hips. He was tall and solid with a flintlock pistol holstered at his waist and a ragged beard that matched the overseer’s in length and breadth. A deep frown line, crevice-like, ran between his brows. Considering this was the first visitor to the Hardy farm since Kate’s arrival seven months earlier, it was not an auspicious start.

  ‘Here, Stewart.’ Mr Hardy reappeared, waving two sheaths of paper. ‘Lease agreement and farm boundaries,’ he stated, spreading the documents on the verandah table.