Tears threatened but they were not for lost love or any bally claptrap like that. They were for the tenderness shown by Nan, for the melting away of the deadening loneliness that had frozen her heart solid. She wanted to ask Nan, ‘Will the baby be all right since I have no love left in me?’ but how could Nan know the answer to that, and besides, was it even true? Nan was examining her skinny arms and legs, exclaiming softly and shaking her head, then asking about the baby and whether Evie had felt it move.
‘Of course I have. He kicks all the time,’ replied Evie, and would have gone on to describe how she could see him, a strong young man on horseback, the dead spit of Fenchurch for the structure of his face and build, with none of the Irish taint. Master of Jarulan, gentleman farmer.
‘Can you see him too, Nan?’ she wanted to ask. ‘All this will be his.’ But Nan was urging her to stand and to lean on her and go quietly down the long echoing corridors to the kitchen.
‘I’ll look after you, dear,’ the old girl was saying, and Evie knew it was true, that she could trust her. ‘We’ll keep you secret till it comes.’
‘Not even Ma,’ Evie said. ‘No one.’
She sat at the table and Nan made her eggs and bacon, a cup of tea, and sliced up an apple. The German and Fenchurch had planned to go out riding, she told her, and Nanny had taken the children down to the river.
‘Hurry up now, Evie. Eat up and back to your room. I’ll be down to see you later.’
The food made her sleepy and she dreamed all afternoon of Fenchurch, of herself and Fenchurch rubbing stirrups, the two of them out riding over the rolling green hills. She felt the sun on her skin and the shift of muscles of the horse beneath her, smelt the crushed grass underfoot and the haze of oil lifting from the baking eucalypts. She could feel her belly resting on the tops of her legs and her heart swelling with happiness. Most of all she was aware of the great, abiding love from the man who rode beside her, the man she had won back from the German.
21.
ARMFUL OF CLEAN TOWELS FROM THE LINEN PRESS ON THE landing, Rufina began to retrace her footsteps towards the corridor that led inexorably to Louisa’s childbed. She would not hurry. She would take her time, have a break.
‘God in heaven, if I had wanted to be a nurse or midwife then I would have trained for it. A girl from Woldingham School less able than I went on to train as a doctor!’
She said it aloud, like a character in a play, like an aside. It was because she was lying to herself, a solitary lie speaking to the crowded truth. There had never been enough time to fully consider a career after that terrible day some weeks after the funeral when her mother had come to fetch her from her boarding school in England. Not yet realising the extent of their penury, Mutti had brought their private train carriage, leaving it in Paris for the return trip. Together they’d cried all the way home, dampening one another’s shoulders, tears gathering and falling from the edge of her mother’s veil to spot her black mourning. It was perhaps the only time Rufina cried purely for her father and not for herself and her uncertain future.
The Berlin house was sold, together with their goods and chattels, and still there were debts, more and more, bleeding dry the small reserve. Then, within a month, her mother conceived of a plan to live quietly and frugally with her sister. Rufina would rather have been buried alive. That’s why Frau Schneider’s offer of employment was a gift from heaven, or so her mother termed it.
And it certainly was, even though once or twice since they had come to Australia Frau Schneider had seen fit to remind her that she was a servant, not a daughter, and to respond more quickly to commands. The memory of the scoldings made Rufina flush with fury and she was glad no one was there to see it. She knew how the colour rose in her face, and how often, for the widest variety of reasons. Any intense feeling would draw it up, a prickling in her flesh and sudden heat — and she would be blushing again. Frau Schneider used to tease her for the violence of it. She called her Feuerlilie, Laterne Gesicht.
Orange Lily. Lantern face. She turned into the hot, stifling bedroom, her face burning at the memory.
If fate had kept her with the Schneiders, this horrifying situation would never have arisen. That employer, so her mother had confided in her, was unable to bear children. This one certainly could and was in the very act of doing so, frightening and hideous.
Nance was with Louisa, as she had been since yesterday. Even though this was Louisa’s fourth confinement, she seemed to suffer as though she had never before endured it, falling asleep between pains and waking with shock and terror to each fresh spasm. Her eyes would fly wide open, those dark blue eyes, which were not like Matthew’s, but those Rufina had taken the time to study in the portrait on the dining-room wall downstairs. Deep blue, they flashed above the glittering gown and picked up points of green light from an emerald tiara. A tiara! Ludicrous! Americans gave themselves such airs. The eyes were a sparkling match to the New York dress and sumptuous surrounding room, the soft dark winter light with snow piling on the sill visible between velvet curtains.
It was painted just before the first Mrs Fenchurch was married, but the subject could have been Louisa, so closely did she resemble her mother, the Irish heritage prime. Fine bones, fair skin, the hair sleek and black, though this hair not prettily dressed but thrashing on the sweaty pillow.
Bog Irish, an Australian friend of the Schneiders had described Louisa before the war, and Frau Schneider had replied that she did believe the mother was American. Such an expression. Surely it was Evie that was bog Irish if ever anyone was, with her angry white face and greedy red lips. You could see it also, still, in the poor burnt sister that had replaced her in the house, sent down an hour ago to boil water on the stove despite Ma Tyrell’s plea not to give her tasks with stove or copper or boiler. It had been Evie’s job, but she would be miles away, hunting down the man that had put her in pup.
Gluck! Good luck to her.
Once or twice Rufina had thought to tell Matthew about it, to describe the night she heard the girl mating, and perhaps she would one night after they were married. After they’d done it themselves, which she supposed they would.
Soon.
Or was he too old? So far he had only kissed her, and last night his warm, dry-mottled hands had risen to lie alongside her corseted breasts but no farther. A deep disarming shiver had run through her and did again now, making her blush furiously and turn away to sort a clean nightgown for Louisa. Soon she would find out what it would be like to know him completely. Head bowed at the drawer she relived the moment of the kiss, remembering how she had kissed him urgently, with no thought to what she was doing, until he gently pushed her away; he could wait until their wedding night, even if she would not.
She loved him. How could she not? Look at what he offered her! Already she had a horse of her own — the lovely wild boy once Llewellyn’s — three new complete outfits and a new hat, and some German novels coming in a case from a bookshop in Adelaide. And she found herself so at peace in his company, saw how he would sit and admire her beauty, how he was curious about her opinions, the world she came from. Sometimes his questions had a sad, dutiful air to them, as if he was making up for some past omission or crime. Or was it only that he wished that he had seen more of the world before he found himself as he was now, bound to the farm, to this extraordinary primeval place, in his fifties?
They would share this world now. She would learn all there was to know about it, his world, since she found herself loving it, riding out with him during the day on Boss, talking long and leisurely in the evenings, bidding a chaste goodnight. She loved seeing the gentle wallabies come around in the early morning and at dusk, learning about the birds, the catbird that had cried on the first morning here, the whip bird that sounded just like his name, the bower bird with its passion for blue — Matthew had told her that one had stolen Min’s sapphire ring! When the first koala was set free, Rufina’s heart had broken in two — but mended, even toughened, since two more capti
ves had died and a third responded to more attentive care. She loved the ugly red lizard-headed brush turkeys, how the male built and cared for a mound of leaves for his family to live in.
And she would learn everything she could from Matthew about the management of the farm, the less interesting side of it, because who knew how his health really was, and how long he would live? This sort of climate was not good for white men; they were not made for it. That was why they had brought the Kanakas in up north, because they didn’t mind the heat and damp. She would demand more than he did of the Aborigines. On the few occasions she had sighted some they didn’t appear to be doing much, the small number that were left.
Where had they all gone? she asked Matthew. He hadn’t answered her, not really. ‘You don’t want to know about that.’ But she did. She wanted to know about everything. As soon as the war was over she would suggest a trip to Europe to see her mother and she would tell her all about the farm. As soon as the war was over.
Louisa was hooting and panting again, and Nance was trying to calm her, so Rufina returned to the bedside, the nightgown over her arm. In the portrait, the small painted hands were frozen in the caress of a lap dog. These fleshly ones scrabbled animatedly at the air, one of them tangling with the mosquito net and inadvertently pulling it across Nance’s face. Exactly the same, with narrow tapered nails that grew naturally to a point. Sheeted invisible legs, possibly also belonging to Matthew’s dead wife, thrashed about in the bed. If she resembled her mother, then perhaps he had given her his nature — that will to be obeyed. Rufina had seen him with the men, heard him speak sharply to everyone but her. Perhaps childbirth was easier if you were weak willed, if you just gave yourself up to it.
Murmuring and hushing, Nance wiped Louisa’s dripping brow.
‘Where’s the doctor? Where’s the bloody doctor, you stupid old bitch?’
It was the hundredth time she’d said it, the abuse unchanging, no longer shocking. Nance and Rufina had given up telling her that the German had been sent away and a new one had not come.
‘You will be all right,’ said Nance again, and Rufina believed her, even if Louisa didn’t. She was screaming again, on and on, so loudly that it seemed impossible that Matthew could not hear from where he’d taken refuge in the empty library.
‘I was there to see all of you arrive,’ Nance said again, as she’d said several times in Rufina’s hearing. ‘Stop fighting it. Let the baby come.’
Rearing up in the bed, Louisa pushed her red, wet face close to Nance’s. ‘Do you think I’m stopping it? Do you think I have any bloody control? Bitch!’ She waved a clenched fist at Nance.
Please God, never let me fall pregnant. The silent prayer was as fervent as any Rufina had ever made. Why would any woman go through with this — or, if it happened once accidentally, why would she ever let it happen again? What an alarming notion it was: every person walking this Earth, every single last one of them since the beginning of time, only did so because a woman had suffered just like this. Because of her travail. Horrendous. So much pain in the world. Too much. And for what? So we can kill them scarcely grown in wars, or work them half to death in factories, or half starve them on farms and plantations.
Nance had taken hold of the savage fist and was patting it, unfolding it, telling Louisa that she had to check now to see if the baby was coming, and Louisa was shaking her head, embarrassed suddenly. A movement at the door and Bridgie appeared with a steaming basin of water, which she placed beside the towels on the dresser.
Then the three of them stood around the bed, watching Louisa writhe as another pain took hold, and she cried out again, but with a different tone and pitch than she’d had during the eleven hours already passed. Before she had a chance to recover, at least enough to be able to push her away, Nance had flicked the covers back. She took hold of Louisa’s knees, lifting them firmly, so that the soles of her feet skimmed along the damp, rumpled bottom sheet, and peered between the thighs. Moaning, Louisa threw a humiliated arm over her eyes.
The thighs were softer than Rufina remembered, having observed before how muscly they were from protracted bouts of tennis with lady friends on Vaucluse courts, from sea-bathing at Watson’s Bay and twice weekly rounds at the Royal Sydney Golf Club. From the long bed rest they had grown lax, delicate, white and waxen, one of them retaining for a moment the print of Nance’s hand.
‘Not long now. I can see the top of his head.’
She made a small gesture, as if to invite Rufina to look too, and the same blue heat of mortification burned at the back of her throat, the same as it had the night she’d heard the lovers.
‘I wouldn’t know what I was looking for,’ she said, a remark that Nance seemed to find amusing. She snorted, chuckled, wiped her cheeks of perspiration.
‘We’re all made the same way, girlie.’ She replaced the sheet and sat heavily on the bed beside Louisa, who was sleeping again, between pains, as suddenly as if she had fallen unconscious.
‘But I have never …’
Intent on the patient, Nance made no response. Perhaps she hadn’t heard her. Just as well. If she had, then she would wonder why Rufina had said it. Of course she was a virgin; there should be no reason to suspect otherwise. It went without saying.
‘Help me to lever her up a bit. She’ll find it easier.’
‘And then I will go out of the room,’ Rufina said firmly, because she really did not want to see the mess and the blood or so she imagined it would be, or to hear any more of Louisa’s keening and wailing. And it was likely Louisa didn’t want her there either, since the last time she had spoken directly to Rufina it was to accuse her of bringing the labour on, so startling was the news of the engagement. She had even screeched at her beloved father, whom she seemed better able to love at a distance than at close quarters. Her so often declared concern and homesickness six hundred miles to the south in Sydney had ebbed away in the heat.
On either side of the bed, Rufina and Nance helped Louisa to lie against the bank of pillows. Bridgie had opened the windows to their fullest extent and was replacing the flyscreens, clipping them into place; not a breath of air penetrated the mesh. Late October and the thermometer on the verandah this morning read eighty degrees. Rufina had gone with Matthew to look at it after breakfast.
Her blouse stuck to her back. She wished she could go outside, find a place in the shade, sit with him.
‘It’s time to start pushing,’ Nance said gently, holding a glass of water to Louisa’s lips. ‘Come on, dear. You must see that — you’ve been through this enough times, haven’t you?’
Louisa glared at her. ‘I had twilight for the others. I was utterly out to it.’
‘Well, you’re not now. Hurry up. Get pushing.’
Nance stood up, as if she was threatening to go out of the room as a means of persuading Louisa to push, whatever that meant, so Rufina out-stepped her, clipping briskly towards the door. At her back she heard a bestial strain, a primitive groan, a sound that made her blush so violently she felt her hair follicles contract and the hair stand up on her head.
She wouldn’t turn around, she wouldn’t, even though Nance called to make her stay, even though the little servant girl was there to help. Bridget seemed hardly affected, her awful face turning contemplatively towards Louisa as Rufina passed her. No doubt she had seen it all before; it was second nature.
Rufina went downstairs to Matthew, who was anxious for news of his daughter, and Rufina found she had none other than that the baby had not come. How could the words ‘Nance can see the crown’ form easily on her tongue, without the blood rushing painfully to her head when it had only just gone back to where it was supposed to be?
They took a turn of the garden, at Rufina’s urging, even though it was the hottest part of the day, the sun blazing in the empty blue. For a moment or two they stood in the deep irregular shadow cast by the fountain and it was then she saw the first saint.
She was hidden between a Roman centaur and one of
the mermen. St Agnes. Her ankle-length hair covered her nakedness, her gaze was brave, direct; a lamb lay at her feet and she held a palm leaf. The water fell from the fountain in such a way as to rush across the penitent mouth, to make it wet and alive. An impulse rose to show Matthew, to point her out and search for more, an impulse that died away even as Sebastian made himself known to her, a blade-bristling figure set into the frieze on the fountain wall. If she was to point them out, then he would know she was raised Catholic, and she would keep it from him at least until they were married, though she scarcely understood why, since Matthew was not interested in religion. He’d told her he didn’t believe in God, that he never wasted time thinking about any church and she’d replied that she was the same. Exactly the same.
It was of the greatest importance to set herself apart from the first Mrs Fenchurch. She would be everything Min was not. It was the dreariest fact that they had shared the same faith, though the Americans had in no way suffered like the German Catholics had. It was like a different church, one free, the other oppressed and persecuted. Rufina pondered. Other than her religion and vague hints about her bouts of madness, what else did she know about her predecessor really? Very little. But she resolved that the second Mrs Fenchurch would be different. Prudent. Irreligious. Practical. Infertile. Most definitely the latter. Let the dead wife lie deep in her grave; let her seep away from the widower’s heart.
Jarulan by the River Page 15