Jarulan by the River

by Lily Woodhouse

  In the meantime no one would have any clue where she’d gone. She would only try to swim a little bit; she would trick God into thinking it was an accident. It would take a while for the mud to melt away from her shoes, it would hold her down but maybe not for long enough to drown and then what?

  The adventure palled. She put her arm around the dog, her mind swimming with the terrible vision of herself not dead but damaged, miscarrying, losing the next heir to Jarulan, being sent away to a hospital or a madhouse.

  What then?

  17.

  MATTHEW HIMSELF PILOTED THE LAUNCH TO LISMORE SO that his son-in-law and grandson could take the coach to Tenterfield to join the Great Northern Railway back to Sydney. Luxury. An alternative to the rigours of a sea voyage. Surely the nanny and the little ones and Louisa could have gone too. All Louisa wanted to do was to languish in her bed and eat for two or more.

  On his way back to Jarulan he reflected that he felt more than a little bruised by their company, especially Arkenstall’s. His son-in-law had tried to broach the subject of the increasing dereliction of the house. On the morning of the day Matthew confronted his grandson about the lost earring — a mistake if there ever was one — he and Arkenstall had gone out riding to see the memorial and from there they had looked east over the farm. Matthew had explained some of Llew’s innovations — the herd of banded Galloways, the first in the district, the north-facing slopes he’d given over to Queensland nuts, the attempt to grow cotton on the flats, how Matthew was keeping it all up.

  ‘The roof could do with a paint,’ was Arkenstall’s only response, gesturing towards Jarulan itself. ‘You’re letting the place go.’

  A farmer will always invest in his land before his dwelling, Matthew could have explained, but couldn’t be bothered. It seemed disingenuous considering that he didn’t lack for funds. A city man could not possibly understand.

  He could have explained that through the dry winter he was having an irrigation channel dug from the river to a new dam, because even though at certain times of the year many acres were inundated, there were parts where the soil stayed as dry and sterile as dust. Fifty, sixty years ago, after the great cedar forests were first felled, cattle grew fat and crops flourished from the moment the seed hit the ground. Already the land was exhausted. Already farmers were searching for alternatives and solutions. If Jean had been with them she might have contributed to the discussion, but she and her children had gone back to the struggling plantation in the north.

  Matthew breathed in the first real cool dry evening of winter, the rich clean smell of the river, heard the satisfying chug of the oil launch. The citified son-in-law could never be a replacement or even a salve for the loss of his own sons, one dead and the other as good as. The conversation, such as it was, had faltered.

  No point in even thinking about him now. He drew the oil launch close to the jetty and tethered her to the post. How much longer would Louisa be with them at Jarulan?

  Up the stone steps he went, between his wife’s lesser stone goddesses. Some of their names were slipping from his memory now that Min wasn’t here to remind him, but Diana he remembered, with her bow and arrow, golden apple and regal profile, which reminded him now of Rufina, a likeness he enjoyed, even though she had been cool towards him, actively avoiding him since the day they rode for the doctor. Yet she’d stayed at Jarulan after he had made himself plain. She hadn’t run away.

  On the top step a paver had come loose and almost tripped him. He paused long enough then to see how green the statues had become, how they had begun to merge into the shrubbery around them as if they were in final retreat, a return to their original material. He would send Evie down with sugar soap and a scrubbing brush to clean them up or ask Nance to send her.

  No, he corrected himself as he crossed the carriageway and went along the verandah, he would tell her himself, boss to girl. There would be another maid to assist Nance, more capable, and then he would send Evie away. It’s too much for Nan, his daughters had told him again and again, as if Nance was an old woman, which she wasn’t. She was younger than him. ‘She’s got Evie,’ he’d replied, and in response Louisa had given him a direct denuding glance. None of her business if she’d worked it out.

  Her room was abandoned. Or seemed to be. He had a look around. He’d known all along who it was who had taken the earring. He had suspected it earlier, while Arkenstall was still here, but he’d used his son-in-law’s presence as added incentive to stay away from her. For the life of him he couldn’t remember what Evie had lying about in here before. He supposed the usual things women had, brushes, petticoats, face cream. Not that he could picture her making use of any of it. Now there was just the bed, a rough-sawn wooden frame with sagging wirewove and kapok mattress, the boxes of old china, a dry smell. He sniffed the air. Perhaps there was a whiff of Evie herself, that coltish smell she had with a hint of yellow soap and soda. He hadn’t been her first, though she’d told him he was. He didn’t believe it. She’d responded too eagerly, too readily. He hadn’t had to teach her anything.

  The bedclothes were gone from the bed, such as they were. A thin old sheet and blanket. It was as well she’d done a flit because he had a sudden need of her and might not have been able to stop himself. Where had she gone? He hadn’t missed her presence in the house. Sullen, distant and slow to please; a less able servant than she was mistress.

  Mistress! Listen to yourself!

  A rather lofty term for what had been going on between them. Men who had mistresses were grander than he was. Arkenstall, for instance. He was a prime candidate. Rich, powerful, with an ailing wife domiciled in the countryside. He’d doubtless have one or two. Evie was never a mistress.

  Matthew came out onto the narrow verandah and squinted up at the house. The rear south-facing windows reflected the evening sky, a deep clear blue lit by a streaming sunset, a sheeny obscuring of any face that might be looking down at him. High gold-flecked clouds were skimming swiftly behind the belvedere, so fast it made the house seem to lean towards him, the whole weighty edifice, as if it could at any moment topple and crush him.

  A memory broke from his childhood, of lying on the paving by the fountain. In those days it was a modest affair, a simple fluted column that culminated in a wide dish, with one point of egress for the water. Embossed on the column was an attempt at a coat of arms: on the shield a saddle, a gun, a red cedar and axe, a bull’s head, and in the centre a gold nugget and pick. The family’s history condensed; a pictograph of how Jarulan had been bought and farmed by his grandfather on his return from the Northern Territory, which was where he had learned the word he gave to his estate as its name. The crest above the shield was in the form of a crudely carved wedge-tailed eagle carrying a burning twig. Jarulan: a fire started by raptors. He remembered his father telling him the story when he was a boy, how birds of prey were smart enough to know how to drive small prey out of grasslands by dropping a fiery brand, how they waited, hovering in the smoke before diving to catch their dinner. Natural strategists and opportunists, he supposed they were, and so were the Fenchurches.

  Min had got rid of that earlier fountain, replacing it with a much grander, very expensive construction shipped all the way from Italy. Naked writhing figures, male and female, had scandalised the district. Min had explained it to him when the first drawings arrived, the satyrs and sirens, nymphs and naiads, and Matthew had done nothing to curb her enthusiasm for fear of a tantrum, and also for the delight he took in her brazen disregard of the old man.

  But the crass extravagance fled now from his memory, replaced by the earlier, modest creation, and himself as a small boy lying on the hot stones, feeling his skin frizzling through the thin fabric of his shirt, looking up at the wide spreading roofs of the house and listening to the playing water. He remembered how it sounded to him like one particular she-oak, a favourite tree close to the river. Every she-oak made its own individual song as the wind rubbed against the whorls of its bark and small scales
of its leaves. That tree — as long gone now as the fountain — made music as watery as the river itself. He remembered how that boy had had these fanciful thoughts and how also he had quailed at the enormity of his inheritance, that the farm would fail, that he would make mistakes, that the grandest house of the north would fall under his watch, his father’s only son.

  Never.

  He went around now to the fountain, remembering how the grandchildren had asked him to make it play again. His response had been that it was broken, though he suspected that all that was wrong with it was silt stopping the flow from the upper dam, or fallen leaves plugging the mechanism. The figures were less green than the statues flanking the stairs, but verdigris-coloured growth filled the crevices and cracks, and flocked bowed heads and uplifted faces. Weeds flourished in windblown soil caught in the folds of scanty robes; the undersides of breasts were cupped with moss.

  Someone was sitting on the low wall of the surrounding empty pool. He could see a dark skirt pulled up to expose a familiar slender leg in the early winter evening sun, stockings rolled down to the tops of two brown boots. The last time Matthew had seen that leg it was clamped to Boss’s sweaty flank.

  Rufina was reading a book, perched between two broad-chested mermen, whose tails had been fashioned to flop over the rim of the pool and made a kind of chair, though he had never seen anyone sit there before. When she heard his footsteps on the loose river stones of the carriageway she flung her skirt down and stood up, blushing violently, her gaze lowered. A true lady, thought Matthew, the most ladylike woman he’d ever met, more so even than Min because she was quieter.

  He waited for her to look at him, and she did eventually. Grey eyes, paler than his own. Clear, clever, dignified. Something else from Evie’s chatter snagged in his brain, though he always did his best not to listen to her — the Hun is a nob fallen on hard times. Her da was a gambler, did ya know? Had Rufina told her something of her past? He would find out himself, who her people were.

  He offered her his arm, inviting her to walk with him, and couldn’t help noticing that she glanced up at the eastern face of the house, as if to check that nobody was watching. Who would be, considering the house was virtually empty? Louisa would have to have got out of bed and come down the corridor to the stained-glass window under the belvedere stairs to see them. And the servants would be occupied with their duties and Lorna and Gordon, the remaining children.

  ‘Bring your book,’ he said, wondering why he found women who read so fascinating, considering he couldn’t be bothered with it himself.

  Waste of time.

  The last few sunrays to reach the fountain caught a frond of weed growing behind Neptune’s ear, setting it gleaming like a plume on a Roman soldier’s cap. He wished he had the lip to comment on it, a way of putting it in words to impress her. Rufina followed his gaze.

  ‘It’s a shame it no longer plays,’ she said, turning to look at the fountain, the riot of breasts and legs.

  Matthew supposed European girls were more used to that kind of thing than Australian girls. Some of Llew’s lady visitors to the house had giggled and gasped. Rufina did not seem to be at all embarrassed, smiling at him, giving him not only her arm but her book to carry. They began a turn around the fountain.

  ‘What a confusion!’ she went on. ‘Neptune, Pan, Hercules, Aphrodite … I think. Romans, Greeks and pagans all mixed up together.’

  Matthew didn’t remember who they were and didn’t much care.

  ‘It is very … ersatz!’

  It was a word he didn’t know, though he was sure Min would have. Rufina’s arm was light on his, their steps in time. He asked her the question he’d planned and she told him the story, of her early life in a fine house in Berlin, the boarding school in England, how her father died in the same year as Min did, with hidden debt, and how her mother’s friend Frau Schneider had taken her in, bringing her with them to Sydney, where they had lived for two years until Herr Schneider was arrested by the military police.

  ‘And Frau Schneider? What happened to her?’

  ‘I had a letter to say that she has taken a house in South West Rocks with another German woman, to be near the Trial Bay Gaol. I was lucky to get another appointment so quickly and easily. Many Germans are without work now. But Mr Arkenstall had taken quite a shine to me, even before I came to live with them. In a fatherly way.’

  Matthew had detected none of this — but then during Arkenstall’s stay he’d rarely been in the company of them both at once. Since Louisa’s fall, Rufina had taken her meals upstairs. ‘Company improves the appetite!’ Louisa had announced, in that way she had of imitating Min. It unnerved him how many of Min’s little sayings Louisa remembered, and also how adept was her mimicry. Occasionally Arkenstall had dined there too, at the little table by the fireplace, and on those nights Rufina had perhaps gone to the kitchen to eat with Nance. And Evie, he supposed. He had stayed away from her since the night she biffed the plate.

  Rufina should have had her meals with him. He would suggest it.

  ‘Sometimes I wish …’

  Rufina trailed off. They had come around the fountain and down the wide marble step to the carriageway, and Matthew supposed he could take her around to the rose garden, such as it was at this time of year for the season and the lack of care. At least the sun would be on it still, the few last blooms, coming over the garden wall before it began its rapid slide below the western hills.

  He didn’t prompt her. He didn’t have to say anything.

  ‘Sometimes I wish I had gone with them, anyway. Even though I would have no money of my own.’

  ‘You must be out of sorts, then, to wish that. You think loafing about in a country town would be better than looking after Louisa in Sydney?’

  Rufina blushed again. ‘But I am not in Sydney, am I? And … And I think that to be among other Germans, to not be constantly on my guard, it would be …’

  He patted her hand. ‘You don’t have to be on your guard here. Even though I have lost my son.’

  The hand stiffened but did not pull away. They passed under the arch of roses, the old canes wound around one another, the blackened leaves. The path was narrow, overgrown; Matthew was compelled to walk in the long grass.

  ‘How old are you, Rufina?’

  ‘Eighteen. I was just fifteen when I left Germany. I have not had the adventures I would have liked to have had. Not yet. Or at least, not as many of them. We saw a lot of Australia, the Schneiders and I. We went by ship to Melbourne, took the train to Adelaide. They have relatives in the Barossa Valley. But I have never before been this far north.’

  ‘Do you like it here?’

  ‘I do. But I want to be either on the move, having adventures, or …’

  ‘Or what?’

  They had paused beside a straggling foxglove, the weather not yet cold enough for it to have died away. Sometimes they lasted the whole of winter, he’d observed, since the gardener was sent off. A whole season of hanging on, rotting and half alive, of waiting for real cold to bite into its marrow, to send it back to the earth. It never came. Browning trumpets were webbed by spiders; one hollowed stalk a home for a large brown beetle, its antennae waving. If he was on his own he’d shake it out onto the ground, have a close look at it before squashing it under his heel.

  ‘Or having my freedom. Being able to please myself. I understand Frau Schneider pleases herself pretty much — though life is dull, and even though they are not in the camp with the men they feel constantly observed. But here am I on the outside and having always to do another’s bidding.’

  ‘Your English is very good,’ he told her, his first compliment.

  ‘I went to school in England. And I had an English grandmother who lived with us, so …’

  ‘And you can ride like the devil!’

  She laughed then, the first time he had ever seen her laugh properly, her head thrown back, her white teeth and full lips.

  ‘So. You would have adventures. Or you
would … what?’

  She shrugged, not looking at him but bending to sniff at a coiled bud.

  ‘You mean you would be mistress of your own destiny,’ he said. A phrase of Min’s. ‘Authoress of your own fate.’ Min again.

  ‘I would!’ She was smiling at him, delighted with his words. It inspired him to go on.

  ‘Mistress of your own domain. Householder.’

  ‘Yes. Yes, I suppose so.’

  ‘Marry me.’

  He was as astonished as she was. Had he really asked her? She was staring at him with those cool grey eyes and he could see that she was thinking about it, that she wasn’t horrified by the idea, that it didn’t disgust her. Perhaps she was an old hand at this, perhaps in the two years in Sydney she had fielded proposal after proposal from men more youthful and cultured than he was. Knocked them back, one after the other. Waiting for a better offer.

  She might also have been thinking of how she was eighteen to his fifty-whatever, that he would most likely pre-decease her by decades, that she would be a wealthy young widow. Did she think that far, he wondered, to a time when she would have this longed-for freedom? Why wouldn’t she, though, since the word ‘love’ had not once been mentioned by either of them? Min and he had fallen in love the first time they’d met, at a hotel in the south of France — the charming, wealthy American and the callow grazier, the first of his family to make the trip back to Europe, to take a Grand Tour. He’d spent a lot of time bemoaning his paltry education; he knew so little about the countries he passed through. Min had been holidaying on the Riviera for the fifth or sixth time with her mother.

  But now was not the time to be thinking about Min, about a day from thirty years ago, when he was as hopeless at courting as he was now, but younger and, he supposed, better looking.

  This is the twentieth century!