Jarulan by the River

by Lily Woodhouse

  ‘Hello, Missus.’ Irving was walking towards her, the men following him. One, a little younger than Matthew’s grandson, looked almost identical to him. For a second Rufina wondered if she was greeting the right one. He drew her in as if he would kiss her or do that odd nose-to-nose greeting she had seen in Rotorua, but stepped away at the last, self-conscious, and she saw that his shirt and trousers were thick with dust, the swag he carried smeary and patched.

  All of them were travel-worn and dirty.

  ‘Jim. Jellicoe. Bill. Joe.’ He gestured at them one after another, without explaining their relationship. It occurred to her that other than Joe, the one who must be his brother, he might have collected these companions on the way. In Sydney or Brisbane or wherever he’d been in the intervening six months since she saw him last.

  The older man, Bill, she wasn’t sure of. There was a sadness in his eyes, a desperation. Was he on the make? He was forty perhaps, difficult to tell. Perhaps he’d struggled to keep up with this vagabond band.

  Footsteps sounded behind them and Nance and Lena appeared, Nance shedding volumes of tears at the sight of Irving, though Rufina couldn’t think why.

  ‘You must all be parched,’ she said, wiping at her eyes with a corner of her apron. ‘Come round to the kitchen and have a cup of tea.’

  ‘They will need more than that, for goodness sake!’ Rufina led the way towards the open side of the house remembering the pebble under her tongue. There was no point in interrogating them now. Later, she would find out who they all were and deal with the situation.

  5.

  HELENA, WALKING ALONG BEHIND THE MEN, THOUGHT THEY reminded her of her Tyrell uncles. They did and they didn’t, since they were darker skinned. But from behind — the black hair, lustrous like hers. The shortish legs and long backs. You are like your mother, Nan would tell her, your nose and lips. But your fair hair, height and broad shoulders are Fenchurch. Put your shoulders back. Stand up straight.

  She did, right then, strode out and wished that the path at the corner of the house was wide enough for her to come abreast of them, of Jimmy, Jellicoe, Irving, Joe and Bill. The most handsome men she’d ever seen, even the old one. Some of them with the same names as her much plainer brothers.

  A cry pulled her up short, turned her around — and there was a little girl standing by the carter’s truck, almost hidden by the shadows of the fast-falling dusk. She called out again. Tally ho, was it? It sounded like it, almost, but she left out the ‘l’s. Tie ho.

  ‘Wait for me,’ she said, as Helena grew closer. A grin spread across her sticky dusty face. There were twin tear tracks clear through the smut. Her hair rose thick around her head and fell below the worn shoulders of her brown calico dress.

  About five, thought Helena. Or four, even. Dark-eyed, smooth-skinned, thin and knobbly kneed — and below them, below those knees were two crooked feet, wrapped in strips of cloth as makeshift boots. As she drew closer she saw that one of the boots had come adrift and that the child had been trying to remedy the situation. Ragged bands lay in a heap beside her; there were haphazard knots in what sparse arrangement remained around the crescent of a foot. A clubfoot. Two of them. One more bent than the other. Now the little crippled girl had her arms raised to be picked up.

  Fenchurch women — that is, Louisa and Jean, the only true Fenchurch women that Helena had ever known — had wide hips, and so did she. Good, childbearing hips, Nan had observed often; don’t let them go to waste! She didn’t want Helena to have the same life she’d had with no children or house of her own.

  ‘Where did you come from, then? How old are you?’

  The child looked thoughtful for a moment before turning her attention to the passing terrain under her dangling feet, the pebbles of the garden path.

  They drew level with the morning room, the French window standing ajar and a curtain billowing with a draft from the reaches of the house.

  ‘What does Bill call you?’

  ‘He calls me — ’ and there was a flood of incomprehensible words, Maori perhaps, and then gales of laughter, the child falling across her front towards Helena’s other arm as she carried her along. She had made a joke perhaps, or said something rude.

  ‘Careful now,’ said Helena, straightening her, and finding that the child did smell a little, of clean earth, not dirt so much. She smelt of her travelling. She needed a proper bath with soap, clean clothes, a sausage, bread. Treacle. A treat.

  As they neared the fountain the little hand stretched out towards it — the beards and spouting sea creatures, the embarrassing bare breasts.

  From the verandah at the back of the house came men’s voices and raised above them Nan arguing with Rufina about taking the men through to the dining room and not the kitchen. No — it was the other way around. The Roof wanted the dirty men in the dining room!

  ‘They will be hungry!’ she was shouting. ‘And they will eat in the dining room. Family, Nance. Don’t forget it.’

  Family, Nance.

  She supposed they were. All of them were family? Her half-nephews, since Eddie was her half-brother. Her nephews — and she was the same age as some of them, probably. She circled the low wall of the fountain, holding the child.

  ‘Lena!’ Rufina was calling her from inside the house, from the corridor, her voice muffling as she moved further away. ‘Lena!’

  ‘Put me here,’ the child said, rising on Helena’s hip as if it were a saddle and her arm the reins. ‘I want to watch the pretty water.’

  ‘There is no water,’ said Helena. ‘It’s broken.’

  ‘Put me!’

  Showing her little pointed teeth, the child let out a piercing wail, so sharp and chilling, as if she was being burned alive, not just cross and wilful. She was lurching around, flinging herself out so that Helena had to lower her to the low wall to save her from falling.

  ‘Just for a moment. Then I will come out and get you to take you inside.’

  The child made no response. The men had obviously spoiled her rotten, made a pet of her, indulged her, unlike the hard treatment meted out to her myriad Tyrell nieces and nephews, or what she had seen of it, which wasn’t much. She wasn’t a true Tyrell, was she? She was a Fenchurch, and some of the family — Teresa, Malachy, Mikie — didn’t let her forget it. Still, she went across the fields whenever she could to visit her grandmother and Bridgie, who still lived in the old house, along with three of the uncles and their wives and brats.

  Maybe one day all of Jarulan would be hers.

  You did hear of it, thought Helena, as she went on her way towards the house, leaving the strange little girl at the fountain. Daughters, unmarried daughters, inheriting the lot. When Rufina — or Mrs Fenchurch, as she forced Helena to call her — when Rufe, as Dad had called her, which actually suited her better since she was like a roof, low and cold and keeping out the sunlight — went to New Zealand, Nan had written to Evie at the last address they had. They’d decided Evie should know what the Hun was up to, going in search of a drunken nigger-lover.

  That’s what some of the hands said Eddie was.

  The men were gathered at the kitchen water butt, and Irving was taking a towel from Nan at the verandah lines to dry his face. He could be her brother, she saw suddenly, they looked so much alike. He was big boned, like her; he had the black version of the strong sleek Fenchurch hair, the same wide mouth, which was smiling at her approach.

  Nan turned to see her and said straight away, ‘Away you go inside. Rufina is looking for you to set the table.’ And then she was taking her arm and not introducing her, not telling the handsome men who she was. They were watching curiously — she could feel all their big brown eyes on her as she was hustled away across the verandah and in the back door. It gave her an odd feeling; it made her feel as though there was a snake in her belly, writhing around — it made her wriggle. She felt her hips swing; it was because of the way the men were looking at her. She could feel it, even though she couldn’t see them while Nan kept a
grip on her and let the screen door slam behind them.

  ‘Don’t, Nan!’

  She tried to pull away, but the old girl was determined, guiding her towards the first bend in the corridor and pushing her into the dining room, which was hot and dark and airless. The door closed between them.

  Had she really done that, with all the men watching? She felt giggly all of a sudden, though she shouldn’t, not in this gloomy long tomb.

  At the end of the cedar wood table, polished and empty but for the three silver candlesticks reflected in its dark depths, was the back view of Rufina. She was holding the curtain aside to gaze out over the fountain to the dusky garden. Helena could see her stepmother’s face reflected filmily in the glass and a gleam of white foxtails below, clasped in one hand.

  No. Not foxies. A handful of knives, silver blades catching the last of the day’s light. As Rufina turned to face her, a sliver of light danced across the polished table to play on the underside of Helena’s wrist, like the buttercup game, the flower held to the whitest skin. On the underside of the wrist, or under the chin. Who likes butter?

  Who was it that had played that game with her? Evie, before she went away? Why did she know it? Ma Tyrell wouldn’t, she didn’t think. It was a soft-faced lady, she seemed to remember, with a soft lap to curl on.

  Do you like butter?

  She remembered it with a soft Yankee accent, like you hear at the pictures, and thought perhaps she’d only seen the lady a few times in the room opposite Dad and Rufina’s bedroom with the cracked leather chair, where she used to play sometimes. She remembered the lady from before she learned to talk, from such a long time ago.

  Why were her thoughts running on about such a silly thing when she’d rather think about how exciting it was that this whole new family had arrived? Which were brothers and which weren’t? Nephews who were more like cousins.

  Rufina let the knives clatter to the table, not caring if she marked the polish, obviously. But then she didn’t have to do it, did she? Thought she was working hard if she mixed the food for the pigs or the horses, what remained of them. If she tried to tell the hands the business they knew better than she did.

  ‘You are not to tell Irving who your father was.’ Rufina spoke so quickly it was as if the words all clumped together mid-air before they separated themselves and made sense.

  The long white face hung at the far end of the polished table, the silvering blonde hair, the colourless eyes. When she was little and Rufina had taken the strap to her or denied her food, or instituted a regime designed to keep her away from her father, Helena would go crying to Nan, would who counsel sympathy, tell her to offer up her misery to Jesus and be kind because the poor woman had no children of her own and that’s what made her cruel; that it must all be her fault because Mr Fenchurch had had no problems siring children, did he, with the first Mrs Fenchurch and Evie?

  Well, Helena thought now, dropping her gaze, neither do I have any family of my own, with my dad dead and my mother disappeared. And now I have new nephews my own age from New Zealand.

  ‘What are you gawping at? Get on with it.’

  Rufina gestured at the second-best cutlery she had thrown on the table, which Helena saw now had marked the surface, but there were so many little marks already that with luck Rufina wouldn’t make a fuss. The worst, more towards the centre, was a deep short gouge where the point of a carving knife had dived into the cedar and was left quavering there until Nan came to clear away. It was the night Helena’s mother had gone forever, chucked out.

  Her or me. He had to choose, and he chose the German. After he threw the knife into the table. Helena had grown up with the story, couldn’t remember now who had told it to her first. Everyone knew, the older station hands, the ancient rabbito, all the Tyrells. She’d heard it many times.

  ‘Lena, you dunce — get moving.’

  ‘Shut up. If you want all those men fed up proper,’ she lifted her chin, ‘then I’m more use in the kitchen. Set the table yourself.’

  She turned and walked out of the room, heart racing. What if a fork or spoon — or carving knife — came after her to clock the back of her head? Rufina had slapped her before. Thrown plates, the works.

  But not since she’d come back from New Zealand, from a place beginning with R. Roatoa something. The Maori word wouldn’t stick in Helena’s head. Where Irving and them were from. After Mrs Fenchurch came back she was different, until tonight, more relaxed, as if she’d proven something to herself — that she could go away on her own. Before she left she was a bundle of nerves, barking at people worse than a dog, off her food. She wasn’t as brave as she pretended to be, was she? More than once Helena had caught her weeping, more often than she had when her husband died. Helena wasn’t afraid of her anymore, even though there had been no tears since her return.

  Nothing struck her, except the Roof’s dumbfounded silence. For good measure Helena slammed the door after her — and remembered then, in a flash, the child she had left sitting on the fountain wall. From her place at the dining-room window Rufina would have been able to see her. How odd it was that she had said nothing, hadn’t pointed a finger and asked in imperious tones: Who is that? Helena picked up her pace and ran down the corridor, out the screen door and around the corner towards the fountain. The men were gone from the yard, all was quiet. The birds even, since the sun was almost gone.

  The fountain was shadowy, the figures blurring. A little darting evening breeze rustled the leaves on its floor. Helena walked the circumference, her heart thumping, frightened. The child couldn’t have drowned, since the fountain was dry, and if she’d wandered off it would have been so slowly on her crooked feet that she couldn’t have got far. What a darned nuisance it was that the child wouldn’t tell her her name. Tally, was it? Is that what she’d been saying? Not tally ho.

  ‘Tally!’ she called and listened hard before she stepped over the low wall and peered into the figures as far as the pipes, as far as she could see — but even a tiny child couldn’t fit in. The men must have come to fetch her. They can’t have been half bad at looking after her, if she’d managed to come this far in one piece from those islands, which were a long way from the Northern Rivers, a long way even from Sydney, which was hundreds of miles to the south. Did the islands lie in the south, too? From her brief education before the Roof put an end to it, and with the little attention she paid, she didn’t remember the map of the world below Australia. What was there? Ice and snow and mountainous seas. Her mother’s people were from Ireland and her father’s from England — those were the islands that had drawn her childish attention. Way way up the top, and pink like Australia.

  Was New Zealand pink too, and whereabouts was it, exactly? She wandered aimlessly around the side of the house, thinking that she would go down to the landing and watch the river flow by, see who was down at the camp.

  Someone small and bent was standing at the top of the river steps between the statues, almost lost in the dusk. It was the Maori child beckoning her to follow. Helena ran towards her.

  It wasn’t. Of course it wasn’t. It was just an old wallaby turning tail as she drew closer, lolloping down the dark pit of bushy stairs towards the water.

  6.

  SINCE HE’D ONLY MET HER THAT ONE TIME, HE HADN’T BEEN sure he would recognise her when he saw her again but he had, as soon as she had come around the corner of the giant mansion. She wore a loose summer frock, shorter than the women wore at home, the fabric so fine you could see the shape of her legs. She looked younger than he remembered and he wondered for the first time how old she actually was. Much younger than his grandfather, his father had told him once. Too young.

  Her hair, cut shorter now, seemed to reflect the yellow gold of the sun, sinking now behind the hills. There were streaks of paler hair, where it was greying. She was looking at him and smiling, and smiling also at his brother and friends around him.

  There was an uncomfortable moment — how should he greet her? — but s
he had offered him a hand so he took that and answered her question about how he had passed the voyage out — Very well thank you, Missus — though it seemed such a long time ago he could barely recall it. Three months he’d stayed in Sydney, helping out sometimes at the fish markets or the wharves, sleeping rough or in boarding houses. He’d met all kinds. Commos in the Domain, sailors at the port, nasty white men who kicked him out of pubs for no other reason than he was brown. There were kind people too, mostly people who had some kind of connection with New Zealand, had been there themselves, were from home, but he didn’t tell her anything of it because he didn’t know where to start.

  There was an Aborigine holding back, watching with his head lowered, looking up now and again to alight on a different face and examine it, until Bill or Jellicoe or Joe met his eye and he looked away. His people were treated badly, worse than dogs. Irving had heard stories of hunts. Not wars. Actual hunts. If that was how they treated their natives, then what would they make of him and the men he’d brought along?

  Irving had gone up to him to shake his hand.

  ‘Irving Fenchurch,’ said Irving. He needed him to know he was a Fenchurch. ‘Albert,’ the man said shyly.

  Then his grandfather’s widow had been at his elbow, as if she wanted to hurry him. Together they had walked around the corner of the vast stone mansion barely exchanging a word. She seemed less certain of herself, which was the opposite of what he’d expected. This was her place, after all, where she stayed.

  At the water tank she’d left them to have a wash and gone inside and he hadn’t spotted her again until now, in a dusty, dark dining hall. She was taking the seat across the wide table from him. A heavy unlit light hung from the ceiling above them festooned with crystals, and floor-length curtains at the windows. Stuffy, airless, a smell of pepper and stewed beef. From a gilt-edged bowl with a matching lid his grandfather’s widow ladled a thin brown stew with a large silver spoon.