by Juliet Bell
‘As we walk, why don’t we talk about the explorers who first opened up this country? That’s what the next section of your lessons is going to be. We can talk about their adventures.’
‘Oh. Yes, please.’
I took Adele’s hand and we set off for the line of river gums that marked the creek.
Betty could hear Adele’s voice so clearly. The windows in her prison didn’t open, or she would have leant out and shouted. The child was leading the mousey-haired woman away from the house. Betty could hear her chatter as they moved towards the creek, but she couldn’t make out the words. If only she could see Adele, and explain. That would make things better. Another noise pulled her attention away from the window. Grace was on the back stairs. This might be a chance.
Betty ran out of her bedroom and into the corridor. Grace was holding a tray with her snack on it. ‘Hello, dear. I’ll pop this down.’ She disappeared into the sitting room.
Betty didn’t hesitate. ‘I’m going to the bathroom.’ She pulled the bathroom door closed from the outside, so Grace would hear the slam, and then she was away. Just as she’d hoped, the door at the bottom of the kitchen steps was still open. Betty ran through the kitchen and out into the sunshine.
Adele and the woman were disappearing towards the Aboriginal camp down by the river. Betty rushed after them. The little girl turned as she approached. ‘Lizzybeth!’
Betty saw the woman frown. She didn’t care. ‘Sweetheart.’ The little girl broke free of the woman’s hand and ran into Betty’s arms.
‘Lizzybeth, we’re going to go and see Peggy. I’m showing Jane all around the property because she’s new and she doesn’t know anyone or where anything is. And Grace said I was big enough to show her things, so long as we stay together and don’t go further than the river.’
Betty nodded. ‘That’s right. You’re not to go too far.’ You have to stay close, she thought, where I can watch over you.
‘Why don’t you come and play with me anymore?’
A stab of guilt hit Betty in the stomach. She was supposed to be the one taking care of Adele, not this stranger. ‘I can explain. I’ve just been…’ She held her hand out towards that house. She’d just been… what?
‘Who are you?’
Betty looked properly at this Jane person for the first time. She was plain. Really not Edward’s type at all. Betty met her gaze. Something shook her. A look in the woman’s eye that she’d seen before. She’d seen it in the other children on that boat years ago. She’d seen it in Edward, just for a moment on honeymoon when they’d told him his father had died. And she saw it in the mirror, every single day. This woman was lost.
The stranger shifted her gaze to Adele for a second and then held out a hand. ‘I’m Jane. I’m Adele’s new tutor.’
Betty looked at the hand. Nobody touched her anymore. Grace patted her head, but nobody had touched her skin to skin since Edward went away. She reached forward. The woman’s hand was soft and warm. Betty held it briefly, before the woman pulled away.
‘Do you live in the camp? That’s where we were going.’
Betty shook her head. ‘I’m not…’ She didn’t understand. ‘I live…’ She raised an arm to gesture back towards the house. Everything seemed difficult to explain all of a sudden. It was hot in the sun. Adele was skipping and hopping from foot to foot, babbling again about where they were going and about Lizzybeth coming with her. It was a lot to take in. It was too much. In all this time locked away, she had become used to the quiet.
‘Elizabeth!’ She knew that voice. This she understood. She looked wildly around. She wasn’t supposed to be out here, was she? She didn’t know exactly why not, but she was supposed to stay inside, be calm, be quiet, not make a show. She turned on her heel and started to run.
‘Lizzybeth!’
Adele’s cry didn’t slow Betty’s racing feet. She couldn’t stay here. There were too many questions out here, too much noise, too much of everything.
‘Where do you think you’re going?’
The hand slapped onto her arm. She twisted away, but the hand was stronger. Max had grabbed her by the shoulders. A few seconds later she heard another voice.
‘Elizabeth!’ Grace was on the veranda. ‘I thought she was in the bathroom.’
Max dragged her towards the house and shoved her at Grace. Betty let Grace shepherd her back into the kitchen, aware of Max following them a few paces behind, ready to come after her if she tried to run away.
He didn’t start on Grace until they were all safely inside. ‘What were you thinking? You know what Edward said.’
Grace nodded. ‘I’m sorry. It won’t happen again.’
‘Make sure it doesn’t …’
She let their voices float over her head. She looked around the room. It was exactly like it had always been, apart from the doorway to the back staircase being open. Pots, pans, plates, cutlery, groceries all exactly where they’d always been. Right down to the box of matches she’d left on the shelf. Betty forced herself not to make a sound. She just leant, very gently and very quietly, and closed her hand over the box. She lifted it as silently as she could into her pocket. She wouldn’t use them, of course, but it was nice to know that she had them. Just in case everything got too much again and she needed to take herself off to that nice, calm place in the middle of the flame.
Beside me, Adele was standing with her hand covering her mouth. Whatever was going on, I could see she was upset. I crouched down in front of her to draw her attention away from the house, and whatever was happening in there.
‘Adele, honey, we have another hour before bedtime. What do you want to do?’
‘I want to talk to Lizzybeth.’
The sadness in her voice was heartbreaking. I glanced back towards the house.
‘I think your friend is busy right now.’ I thought quickly. ‘Do you want to go down to the stables? Grace told me this morning that there was a new foal. Do you want to look at it?’
The little girl’s face brightened and she nodded.
‘All right, then. Let’s go.’ I kept my voice cheerful, but I was confused.
We wandered towards the stables. ‘Who was that lady, Adele?’
The little girl scuffed her shoes in the dirt alongside me. ‘Lizzybeth.’
She looked like a light-skinned Aborigine maybe, but I didn’t know. I found my awareness drifting to the hand that she’d held just for a second. The look in those dark brown eyes, had made it seem like she knew me somehow. I tried another question. ‘Why haven’t I met Lizzybeth before?’
Adele shrugged. ‘She went away before you came.’
But now she was apparently back and Max Hardy didn’t seem to be too happy about it. The slammed doors and the numerous young women I’d seen storming away from Max’s house sprang into my memory. ‘Was she friends with Mr Hardy before she went away?’
‘Maybe. She was friends with Daddy, I think.’
The foal distracted Adele enough to give me chance to think some more about Elizabeth. It didn’t take that much thinking really. She was beautiful. Max seemed violently angry to see her. Adele thought she’d been Daddy’s friend. I might be innocent about men, but I’d watched enough films with Gail to know the sort of passions that could be aroused. It wasn’t hard to imagine how a woman like that could cause anger between two red-blooded men. And if Max and Mr Rochester had both been involved then that was simply none of my business. I certainly didn’t want to pry into some love triangle involving my employer, but the way Max had grabbed her bothered me. I understood that sort of roughness. It wasn’t right.
I pushed the concern away. Grace had been there. Calm, sensible Grace. She was probably giving the woman a nice cup of tea and arranging for someone to drive her back to Bourke right now. It was a relief just to be responsible for little Adele. I wouldn’t have had a clue how to deal with a jilted lover.
I glanced at my watch. It was time to get Adele back to the house for her snack before bedtime.<
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Getting my charge to leave the foal wasn’t easy, but I soon had her ensconced at the kitchen table with a plate of her favourite biscuits in front of her. I followed the older woman out onto the veranda, clutching the cup of tea she always forced on me while Adele ate her evening snack.
‘I met someone today. A coloured woman named Elizabeth.’ I kept my tone light as I sat down on one of the wooden chairs Grace kept at the end of the veranda nearest to the kitchen. ‘She was going down to the Aboriginal camp, I think.’
There was no answer, and I resisted the urge to ask more directly. I was new here, and it wasn’t my place to do that.
‘Max intercepted her and I think he brought her up here.’
Grace continued to drink her tea in silence. Maybe I was intruding. Maybe I had overstepped a mark somehow. ‘I’m only asking because Adele was upset. She wanted to know when she’d see her again.’
She frowned. ‘The little one asked about her?’
‘Adele said they were friends.’
I watched Grace’s face as closely as I dared. She was quiet again, apparently lost in thought. Eventually she shook her head briskly. ‘Well, you can tell Adele she probably won’t see her again.’
‘Does she live in the camp?’
‘She used to live here. She’s not part of the place now. Mr Rochester thought…’ She shifted her mug into the other hand and then back again. It wasn’t like Grace to be so taciturn. ‘Well, some people belong in a place like this and some people don’t.’
I looked out to the horizon. ‘Some people must find it quite isolated.’
Grace nodded. ‘That’s right. If you’re used to being around people, somewhere like this could do funny things to you.’ She looked at me. ‘Not to you, though. You fitted in straight away.’
I was flattered that she thought so, and I tentatively agreed. Being away from the world didn’t bother me at all.
‘Did you take Adele down to see the foal?’ Grace changed the subject.
‘Yes. She adored him.’
Grace smiled, apparently happier with the new topic, which was fine. Mr Rochester’s girlfriends – or Max’s girlfriends, for that matter – were none of my business. Although I couldn’t shake the thought that there was something wrong. There was a secret here. Perhaps one day that secret might be important for me to know. But for now, I would let it rest.
‘So you’re safer in here.’ Grace smoothed Betty’s hair.
Betty nodded. It was later in the evening now. The rest of the house would have gone to bed, but Grace was standing over Betty with her head tilted to the side in a mixture of determination and compassion.
‘And it’s better for Adele.’
That wasn’t right. ‘Adele was happy to see me. She misses me.’
Grace pulled her hand away. ‘But she’s got a new tutor now. It’s confusing for her if you’re around as well. She was a bit frightened when she saw you.’
Grace spoke with a soft, sing-song tone that she always seemed to use these days. ‘There’s something else I was going to tell you.’
‘What?’
‘Young Mr Rochester’s on his way back.’
Betty sat up. ‘When?’
‘I don’t know. Tomorrow, probably, or the day after.’ Grace smiled. ‘It depends on the weather. When he telephoned he said he needed to stop in Bourke for something as well.’
She didn’t go to sleep after Grace had left her. She stayed by the window, looking out towards the landing strip waiting for the mail plane, even though she knew it wouldn’t come until tomorrow morning at the earliest. When Edward came back though, she realised, all of this would be sorted out. They’d argued. Married couples did that. Even Mr and Mrs Mason had had arguments sometimes, she thought. But after an argument they’d made up. Edward would come back and he’d come to her, and he’d realise that she’d been in here all the time that he was away. And he’d say sorry. And she’d say sorry for being angry. And everything would go back to normal.
Betty pulled her knees up to her chest, wrapped the doona around her as the sun dropped, fixed her eyes on the landing strip and waited.
Chapter 41
Nearly two days later, the plane came. Betty watched Max set off towards the airstrip in the ute, and she watched him return with two passengers.
The first passenger jumped out in front of the house. A woman. Celine, maybe? Betty strained to see – she was blonde rather than red-haired but Celine probably changed her hair colour for every audition. The man Betty recognised immediately. It wasn’t Edward. Richard Mason, sitting in the back, was unmistakeable. He was a slim little man, always looking slightly like a little kid playing with the big boys. So where was Edward?
She listened for any snatches of conversation that might give her a clue but the group disappeared quickly inside the house. Edward must be on his way. Or could he already be here? Celine wouldn’t drag herself all the way out here if her little playmate wasn’t around. Betty felt a stab of jealousy. Celine shouldn’t be out there with Edward while Betty was shut away in here.
She forced herself to take a deep breath. Edward wasn’t here yet. This was the only plane that had landed since Grace had told her he was coming back. And if he’d driven, she would’ve heard the car. She was sure of it. And if he was here, he’d have come to her. Whatever else had happened, even when his father had died, he’d always come to her at night. She was his wife. If he was here, she would’ve been the very first person to know.
I couldn’t get the woman, Elizabeth, out of my mind. Something about her reminded me of Helen. It didn’t make sense. Helen had been fair and blue-eyed, and petite. This woman was curvaceous despite being very slim. Nothing about the two of them physically was alike. But there had been a moment when she took my hand and looked into my eyes. Some connection that I didn’t understand – as if this woman wanted to tell me something or share something with me.
Today I’d left Adele working on her art project at the kitchen table, and set out to clear my head. The track from the house leading towards the main road was rough and dusty, but at least if I stayed on the track, I wouldn’t get lost. I wasn’t planning to walk as far as the road – that was many kilometres away, but the track gave me the solitude I needed to think.
I thought about Helen. I didn’t try to. The whole idea of coming to Thornfield was that this was a new place and a new start. This was a place where I could become normal. It wasn’t working yet.
At one point I thought I heard the mail plane, but I didn’t bother turning back. Grace and Max would take care of that.
The day was hot, and my cotton top and shorts were stained with sweat and dust by the time I had reached a decision. I had to ask again about Elizabeth. All I wanted was assurance that she was safe. I presumed she’d been driven over to town and would have headed off on her own from there. If that was the case, I would let it go. The way her face was playing over and over in my head was just an aberration. A sign that I was thinking about Helen. I just didn’t want another terrible thing to happen to another person because I’d walked away. That was all. It wasn’t because I was having those feelings again. I’d been so young when I’d been with Helen. It was normal to look fondly on youthful mistakes, and feel a tinge of regret. But those mistakes did not define the future.
Yet, sometimes, in bed at night, I could still feel the warmth of Helen’s breath on my cheek. I didn’t just imagine her gentle fingers on my skin as an idea in my head. I felt them. The joy that we’d found together was always there on the edge of my senses. I wanted that joy again, but properly this time, without slicing myself in two between love and faith.
I shook my head and turned back towards the homestead. I was lonely, getting used to a new environment. That was all. This was the start of my normal life, and it was like Grace had said – I fitted in here. I needed to learn to be at peace. Then maybe I’d be ready to take the next step.
I was so lost in my thoughts, I didn’t hear anything until
the sudden loud growl of an engine sounded close behind me. I started to turn, but lost my footing in the soft ground. I staggered and fell onto the thick red dust. A motorcycle slid past, just centimetres away from me and ploughed into the track. I saw a dark figure fall, then everything was lost in the choking dust.
‘Bloody hell!’
The deep masculine voice was ragged with emotion. Anger or pain – I wasn’t sure which. Maybe both.
I peered through the slowly settling dust at the man sitting on the gravel road less than a metre away. He was hugging his right leg.
‘Are you all right?’
‘What do you think?’
He raised one hand and clenched a fist. I stumbled backwards in fear, but he wasn’t about to hit me. His hand was already covered with blood, and his fingers were biting into his own flesh as he fought against the pain in his leg.
I crawled closer to him. ‘How can I help?’
‘I think you’ve done enough already.’ He spat the words at me. For a second I froze. I’d done nothing. I’d just been walking along the track. I opened my mouth to protest but stopped myself immediately. This man was injured.
I dug into my memory for the first-aid lessons I’d taken at school. Blood was seeping from the wound on the man’s leg, where part of the motorcycle, or perhaps a branch of the fallen timber that lined the road, had ripped through his trousers and into the flesh.
‘I need something to act as a pressure bandage. Give me your shirt.’
Moaning slightly, the man sat back and started tugging at his clothes. I put one hand on his leg. He didn’t flinch. A moment later, a wad of cloth was pushed towards me.
‘Hold still. This is going to hurt.’
‘It’s hurting like a bastard already.’
I put his choice of language down to the pain and folded the body of the cotton shirt into a pad, then pressed it firmly to the man’s leg.
‘Give me your hand.’ I got him to hold the wad of fabric in place while I tied the makeshift bandage using the sleeves. He sucked the air in sharply as I did so.