Jarulan by the River

by Lily Woodhouse

  But it steadfastly refused to open.

  Some days the confinement of the small room grew unbearable and it was as much as she could do to wait until the night came and with it the chance of momentary escape, of food, of flitting in the shadows. She was like a bat, she thought, all folded up on herself and upside down.

  At least it was winter now. The days were shorter, if only by a little, and the household kept to its routine — Matthew giving his orders in the yard, sometimes his voice carrying to her ears if she was sitting at the window, before he rode out on Flora for the day’s work. There was the smell of smoke as the kitchen fires were brought to life, the first task of Nan’s day. The old mare rose with the sun, just as she had always done. On Mondays when the laundry chimney puffed into the sky, the smoke lifting above the washhouse roof in the lowest corner of the triangle of sky, Evie couldn’t help feeling guilty, but for all she knew Nan had another girl to help her, possibly even Bridgie or Tess. There was certainly a younger, snappier set of footsteps around the house, as well as the ones she eventually identified as belonging to the German. Sometimes she confused them with the Sydney nanny, but not often, since the nanny’s steps were heavier and most often accompanied by the running, stumbling steps of the little children.

  One still, fine night the house took hours to settle and Evie waited impatiently until she could slip away down to the kitchen. It was perhaps eleven, or even midnight, when she heard a man coughing, just on the other side of the potting shed. Fear gripped her so suddenly she felt the bile rise in her throat. Had he seen her candle, which she had only just extinguished? The cough came again, less a cough than a deep cry, and she realised it was a koala come close to the house. She and her brothers and sisters had had a progression of them, one after another, kept tied to the same tree near the house, but they had all died.

  Cough, cough. And then a short, sharp scream, as if it was under attack. It was silent then, it seemed for several minutes, before the coughing began again and this time with more despair, a kind of hooting and bellowing, and Evie began to feel sorry for it. Chill in her tight grubby dress she climbed out the window, and went around by the light of the moon until she saw the glint of the chain on the ground. Collared and sad, the bear slumped by the trunk of its tree, easy prey to Llew’s dog or any other free to roam. It faced into the darkest part of the garden, a low, grunting noise lifting from its chest.

  ‘Quiet, little fella. Easy now.’

  It turned its head in her direction, fluffy white ears catching the moonlight, the gleam of its eyes and inverted-spoon nose. They could move quickly on the ground, when the mood took them, much more themselves slow and high in the branches, their rightful place. Smallish, not fully grown, it had very long black claws, the points of which could match the long scar on one arm that she bore from one of her girlhood captives.

  She came as close as she dared, reaching forward to undo the buckle of the collar. A smell of piss rose from its fur, thick and soft around her scrabbling hands, finally managing the rusted pin, and giving the animal a little push to prove its liberty. If the koala was game enough to cross the carriageway, and scamper round behind the creamery, then it could make its way to the first trees of the last forests this side of the river, the big bush that covered the gentle, wide incline all the way up to the memorial. It would be safe there.

  At first the koala didn’t move, just sat there blinking its big button eyes, face still set in her direction but she felt as though it wasn’t really looking at her, but around and behind her, looking at what she wasn’t, rather than the tiny piece of the night that actually was Evie Tyrell, flesh and blood, the rescuer. It was unnerving. It made her feel as though she didn’t exist.

  ‘Off you go,’ she whispered, pushing it again, and the koala did then, tentatively, dropping forward to lope along on its funny bendy legs and she went along behind it, chivvying it towards the trees, still a hundred yards away. When she reached the creamery she glanced back at the house, thinking of what she hoped to find in the kitchen — cold meat in the safe, a heel of bread, a carrot, a piece of cheese. Her stomach rumbled.

  A plate set specially by Nan. A pear. A jar of jam. One night soon she’d find Nan waiting up for her in the kitchen, sitting in the dark, an ambush.

  From the south side, Jarulan’s windows were black, except for one lamp still burning on the second landing, the tall stained-glass window set in the arched frame. There was a bird in the pattern she’d never noticed before, a bird flying among the Fenchurch crest — the rifle, an axe, a bull’s head, a tree, a saddle, a gold nugget and pick, all of it out of proportion. The bull’s head was smaller than the nugget. Was it a bird, or a crack in the glass? Evie peered — it was a bird, a black eagle, with a stick in its beak. Or a candle? At one end of the stick a flame burned.

  There was a change in the light behind the red cedar, a half form of a young woman moving in the clear part beside it, looking out into the night. The blue dress was gone and replaced with a fashionable skirt and white puff-sleeved blouse, her hair arranged more softly on top of her head, instead of her usual tight prissy knot. Had Rufina seen her? She was looking above the shadowy trees, her head level — perhaps even tipped back. She can’t have seen her. Evie stepped quickly into the shadows, among the trees, and the next time she looked up at the window the light had been extinguished and it seemed as though the figure was looking directly at her. There was no way she could run back to her hiding place now, Rufina would see her. Evie froze, thought desperately of what she should do and remembered how, in the face of the enemy, a mother wombat will throw her joey from her pouch and act as a decoy in order to save the infant’s life.

  Rufina hadn’t moved. Her gaze had shifted elsewhere, over to Evie’s left somewhere, she was sure of it. Or had it?

  Once, out hunting with her brothers, Jimmy had fired his airgun at a wombat’s bony arse and the old fat sow had grunted and growled as she’d run, throwing out her baby near enough for Evie to see it, and so take it home for a pet. It was a hairy-nosed wombat, she remembered. She’d let it go after a few days.

  She would lead Rufina away from her hiding place so that she could return safely to it later. Hands cupped under her swelling belly, Evie ran towards the dense bush below the memorial, round behind the creamery and the row of kennels. A mistake. Llew’s dog started — Evie recognised the bark — and the others followed. On the other side of the fence there was a lamp still alight in the old rabbito’s hut, set apart from the rest of the accommodation and closest to her route. Surely even if the old man came outside it was too dark for him to see her.

  She veered away, taking the more open, dangerous path down the slope towards the river. There were stones here, sharp in the dirt, which hurt her feet. Had she pulled the window closed after her? Had she left them any clues?

  If Rufina was running to Matthew to tell him what she’d seen — if she had seen anything — would he come after her? He might even saddle up Flora and let the dogs off to hunt her down. Her lungs burned, her thin, weak legs felt wobbly, her rounding stomach a band of pain that extended into her kidneys and lower back. The further she climbed the hill, the more dense the bush, the louder with insects and nightbirds, the more paralysing her rising terror of snakes, until she could go no further. She was above the river; she could hear it rushing through the trees. There was an open space at the top of the low cliff, enough moonlight to see anything shifting in the bush, and she found a place she could hunch — heaving for breath, dizzy and sick — and wait. She would wait a few hours and then set off towards the room before dawn. No one would see her.

  Her breath steadied and she felt the night wrap her round. An open patch of sky showed a flock of tiny birds — no, they were bats, catching moths, moonlit specks lifting like ash from a fire. Night insects buzzed and sawed, a roosting bird shifted somewhere far above her head. A soft, hazy moon slung low above the western hills, and the rhythmic call of an owl came from nearer the river, on and on, l
ike a heartbeat.

  A pulse, a heartbeat. She half wanted them to come after her because then there would be a chance of food. She was so hungry she sucked her fingers. An hour or two, here on this flat rock where she could keep watch for snakes or insects crawling towards her, where a patch of moonlight shone, that’s all she could bear. An hour or two before she had to eat something. What if an Aborigine came along, one of the few left in the district, and found her food right here under her nose? Food that was here all the time. She lifted a stone, put it down again, yanked a paspalum stem and stuck it in the corner of her mouth, dreamed of stew and potatoes.

  19.

  NO FOOD HAD BEEN TAKEN. THE THINGS NAN HAD LEFT before she took herself to bed, the plate of cold beef in the meat safe with the jar of relish she’d put near, were untouched. She suspected Evie had not been near the kitchen, which surprised her; the night had been windy, wild and banging, the perfect weather for thieves. A dropped cup, the clatter of a knife, a too-urgent spoon — all would have been concealed by the clamour and howl of the spring winds blowing in from the coast, great cool gusts bringing the smell of the sea from twenty miles away. One night soon she would wait up to lay eyes on her.

  No one had seen Evie for weeks, not since the night she set the koala bear free and run away into the bush, and that was only Rufina. Fenchurch had decided not to believe it — Rufina was mistaken, it would have been one of the younger Tyrells come to claim the animal they had caught and wanted for their own. They could have it. Stupid, smelly animals, he said.

  Had she been too obvious in her provisions, Nance worried. Surely Evie would expect that she would notice the disappearances and could tell Matthew. It had been going on for so long now that it felt almost normal to come soon after dawn each day into the empty kitchen and look for evidence before she did anything else. The first few nights she’d prepared the plate it had been ignored, with the thief continuing as she had since early in the winter, raiding the dry stores, the bread bin, and God help the poor deluded girl, the pig bucket, where she might find a cooked potato, or a bone from Matthew’s plate with meat still clinging to it, or a half-eaten serving of rice pudding. Lately there would have been slim pickings — Fenchurch seemed to have his appetite returned, which may or may not have been encouraged by the German, who took most of her meals with him now, leaving Nan to collect Louisa’s tray before she cleared the plates from the dining room.

  Should she cook extra portions for Evie? Proper meals? The plates she left for her were usually scraped bare. By this time, mid-September, Nance was convinced it was Evie, not midnight raids by the Sydney nanny, who grew daily more creamy and plump. Or one of the younger hands stealing over from the accommodation, a lad still growing, seized by hunger pains in the small hours of the morning and knowing better than to steal from old Arthur, the stockmen’s cook, who was a martinet and wouldn’t have them helping themselves.

  Today, Nance resolved, she would find her. The hideaway must be near the house — possibly even in the house. She knew every nook and cranny. She would find her.

  Breakfast was prepared for the dining room and stacked on the trolley, Fenchurch never having returned to his kitchen habits since his daughters’ visit, and breakfasts for the nursery and for Miss Louisa were laid out on two trays. Nance got the new Tyrell girl to carry up the trays, one by one. It was the sister who had fallen into the fire when she was a child, the poor unfortunate with the badly scarred face. Bridget.

  ‘Where’s the other one?’ Louisa had asked on Bridgie’s first day. Bridgie had shrugged her narrow shoulders and looked to Nance, since she didn’t know and neither did anyone else. Louisa had sent Evie’s sister from the room and informed Nance that she preferred the crazy one, that looking at the new face upset her, with its ridges and puckers and strange croaking voice from the fleshless slit of a mouth.

  ‘She’s the girl we’ve got now,’ Nance had replied, thinking that it was high time that Louisa got out of bed, that too much time had gone by without a muscle in her body working, other than the tongue, and that indolence wouldn’t encourage an easy time of it later.

  Setting out now with the creaking trolley, Nance went down the hall towards the dining room. The German preferred a more elaborate early breakfast than Fenchurch would ever have — coffee, fresh fruit, finely sliced ham — and had requested more than once fresh rolls. Rolls!

  I ask you!

  When she shunted open the door with the trolley, she surprised them, their hands clasped on the table between their plates, though surely they must have heard her approach, the racket the little wheels made on the thin carpet of the hall. She parked the trolley beside Rufina and turned to leave the room — but Fenchurch stood to detain her.

  ‘Nan? Wait a moment.’

  She met his eye, thinking of her lost Min and how she must be spinning in her grave. First Evie and now this one, and from him who never before displayed this kind of behaviour, though it was common enough. Hadn’t his own father taken his pick from the Irish and the Blacks, some even younger than these two? Rufina was the older, perhaps nineteen or twenty — Evie was still a child.

  ‘Not a word about this to anyone, Nan?’ Fenchurch was saying.

  ‘About what?’ She knew she sounded abrupt.

  The German was blushing, like blood spilling on white stone. Yes, Nance thought, staring at her, doesn’t she remind me of Min’s statues the day they were lifted from their crates, frightening, strange.

  ‘Rufina and I are getting married in November. We will tell Louisa this morning, and write to Jean.’

  And him in New Zealand, thought Nance automatically but didn’t say. The news hadn’t sunk in. ‘Married?’

  Fenchurch nodded and took his seat, Rufina never taking her eyes from him. Her shining, loving eyes. Or was she only pretending?

  He had no idea what he was doing. Why would he want another wife and one so young, and a German? She would be mistress of the house. Everything would change. A seismic wave roared across the sinking plain of Nance’s years of service and drudge, reared over her head and froze there. The horrifying pause before it broke. And break it would.

  Oh, Min.

  ‘You can go now, Nan,’ Fenchurch said gently, because she was staring at them. Man and wife. A German younger than his daughters. The enemy. A murderess.

  She went out of the room and found her feet leading her up the stairs to the second floor and down the corridor, past Louisa’s door. A glimpse of the swollen patient showed her spooning up porridge, a book wedged open under the edge of her plate. Nan hurried on towards the steep belvedere staircase and began to climb — the aching knees, the shortness of breath — but find Evie she would. She would think only of that, and not the lovebirds downstairs, who made her stomach churn; she could throw up it was so sickening, but her stomach was empty, there being no time yet for her own breakfast.

  Where could the girl be? Not here, of course, since it was a favourite roost of Fenchurch’s, less so in the last few weeks. And it was empty of furniture but for Matthew’s chair, so there was nowhere to hide.

  But oh wasn’t the floor in need of a sweep, the panes a wipe with vinegar, the rolling dust bunnies set free to fly from the windows? It was too much to bear looking at. Too much to keep.

  From the eastern windows she looked out towards the Tyrells’ run, where two thin black-haired sons were bent over in the weedy back field, one of them pulling the plough in lieu of the horse, since their old horse had died and there was no money to buy another one. When Min was on the Bangalow church welfare committee the Tyrells were often recipients of some little available charity, and no good it did them. At least there would be no more babies now that the old man had turned up his toes — until the oldest boys brought their own wives home for a baby a year. The land couldn’t be divided up any more than it already was. It was how the Proddies held onto their land, leaving it to only one son — more greed and inequity, second nature to them.

  Evie was, of course,
pregnant with Fenchurch’s child. It was obvious early on, when the morning sickness took hold and the girl was more gormless and dreamy than ever. After the fourth morning in a row, a knowing look had passed between Nance and the Sydney nanny across the breakfast table, when Evie’s porridge was abandoned, the girl suddenly pale and heaving and running for the back door.

  Then she had gone to earth, like an animal. Where would she have gone? If Nance were Evie, where would she choose to hide, dark and warm and out of the weather?

  Already, over the past few weeks, Nance had gone out to check some of the outbuildings, the abandoned creamery, the barn, the quarters. The stockmen’s cook hadn’t seen her, neither had the rabbito. Ma Tyrell had been up to the house three times since the vanishing — once for the wages, once to bring the burnt girl, Bridgie, and once to see if there was any news of her other daughter, since she’d had none herself. Like Nance, she didn’t believe the story of the river taking her — they agreed that the wicked, spirited girl burned too brightly to have any notion of doing herself in. She wasn’t the type. They agreed also that she wouldn’t have slipped and fallen in by accident, since the girl had grown up on the river and was as surefooted on its banks as a goat. By the time Ma left, she had a gallon of tea and half a dozen scones inside her, weighing down the swayback horse on what was to be its last day on earth, a slow amble across the fields.

  Nance began a traverse of the length of the room, taking her time at each window, each frame a bird’s eye view — sublime, high, green and blue, made you want to sing. No wonder all the children had loved it up here, a place for soaring spirits and high jinks and make-believe. At the northern side was the view over the top of the fountain, which played again now since Fenchurch fixed it. From this height it looked like a group of visitors caught in heavy rain on their approach to the house, with the stone steps leading down beyond them into the overgrown lush bush, and then the river, silver under the high grey sky.