Jarulan by the River Page 3

  These are the ones we should be sending to the slaughter, not strong, clever boys like Llew.

  ‘You going to be all right? Can you work in this weather?’ he asked. They were never going to be able to do it alone. ‘You want me to send someone to help?’

  The mason shook his head. He had been looking at the drawings — he held them still, drooping from his hand.

  Matthew wouldn’t blame him for the slow progress. He’d been slow himself, with the design. For two months he had dreamed and sketched, having always a pencil and a notebook in his pocket. Tall and narrow black granite with a spire. Or short and squat Sydney sandstone capped with a brass plaque. Or in Italian marble an Australian digger in boots and puttees, the rising sun etched into his hat. Or an obelisk of Victorian bluestone, unadorned and severe. Which? The stonemason had wanted it left up to himself to decide.

  ‘But I’m paying,’ Matthew had said. ‘I decide.’

  Nearly every day, it seemed, there was news of another casualty to add to the list, another lost boy from the district, so many he began to fear he would be overwhelmed by the numbers, and that one edifice should be built for his son and another for everybody else’s. Why not? He could afford to build a hundred of them. Still plenty in the bank, a little more gained from Llew’s successful projects, a large remnant of the fortune his wife had brought with her to the marriage, and some of what he’d inherited from his own father. No — he would build one grand cenotaph fit for a hero, for all the heroes, fit for all the lost boys born within a day’s ride in any direction.

  When it was finished, the ashlar would sit on the base, and mounted on that, four pillars to represent the corners of the world. They would be of fluted stone with olive branches carved in at their upper edges — crockets, the mason had said. All four of the faces would bear legends: Llewellyn would have his own, leaving two sides for the other names, and one empty, reserved for ‘The Unknown’. Topping the pillars a cupola of wrought iron would culminate in a cross, at the centre of which he would place a piece of Venetian glass, red for the bloodshed, positioned to catch the first light of each day rising above Jarulan.

  From here there was a perfect view of the house, the platoon of chimneys and tent camp of gables advancing through the rain. The highest point was the ornamental turret of red brick on the western wing, and below that the long wooden and glass belvedere that ran atop the full extent of the stone house. As a boy he had played up there, as his sons had after him, summer and winter, a many-windowed eyrie that gave the true extent of the family lands, the thousands of acres that awaited them, the cattle, the sheep, the crops, the timber, the river. He found himself up there a lot these days, dreaming and remembering, living in the past. If he were up there now he could be looking this way, seeing himself standing by the emerging memorial, locked in history.

  When it was finished, all that would stop. He would look forward to the rest of his life. He would even think about marrying again, a wife young enough to bear a son or two, boys who could one day take it all over. He would change his attitude. He would, once his beloved Llew was here on the hill, in stone. As much of a homecoming as he would ever get.

  4.

  EVIE HAD NO WAY OF TELLING THE TIME EXCEPT TO KNOW IT WAS later than it should be by the column of grey smoke rising into the pearly sky from the washhouse chimney. She had ridden over seated behind her brother Jimmy on the swayback horse, Jimmy being on his way to pick fruit at the next orchard, but this morning he had a bad head from drinking all Sunday and they were late. Even the horse had dragged its feet, as if it had a blinder as well. The smoke was a signal that Nan had made a start, and Evie wished she wouldn’t — it usually meant a clip around the ears. Past the rose gardens, a wild sodden mass of pink and cream and yellow, she felt a wind of exhilaration blow through her, as though her whole body had burst into bloom, as if her brain had switched on like an electric light. Mr Fenchurch paying her court! No one would believe it, but he had, he had, he had! He had liked the look of her. She had no need to convince herself but she did so anyway — he did, he did, he did! — in time with her quick bare feet clipping along the gravel path beside the old creamery and into the yard. There was no time to detour this morning to the poor lonely puppy dog whose life she had saved. All those months ago Mr Fenchurch had been demented with grief and gone out to shoot it, but he couldn’t with her standing there, he couldn’t do it.

  If Mr Fenchurch sought her out again — and she knew he would, there was a light in his eyes, a longing she’d seen once or twice in other men — she would ask him if she could have the dog. She would see if he’d make a present of it to her, since he didn’t want it anyway, and she would take it home for the brats, where it may not have a long life but at least it would learn what it is to be off a chain.

  It was a shame that the afternoon they first met properly ended so badly, but it was only because she’d noticed the rifle leaning up against the kennel when she’d gone out to the lines after they’d got Mr Fenchurch back into bed. How was she to know it was loaded and sprung? The accidental death was regrettable and Nan had shed a surprising tear over the peacock before she helped her bury it. Afterwards she comforted a terrified Evie that Mr Fenchurch would never find out, that part of his madness since his wife died was to give orders to the gardener that the only beds he was to attend were the vegetables and let the rest go to wilderness. It was another detail to add to what Evie knew from local gossip — how mean he was, how solitary, said the people of Clunes and round about; how he was letting the fine house run down, though he kept up the farm. No one would ever find the peacock in what used to be a fuchsia bed now overgrown with weeds.

  All through the morning’s work, the soaking and scrubbing and stoking of the fire, the grating of the soap and dollop of Rickett’s Blue, the boiling and the suds, the rinsing and the drudge, she thought only of Mr Fenchurch and how happy she had made him just by stroking his horse, how the corners of his old (but handsome!) mouth had turned up the moment he’d seen who it was coming along the road, and how he had asked her questions as if he’d cared for her comfort. Nan came in once or twice to check her progress, and helped her put the bed sheets through the wringer, heavy linen from the land of her forefathers that she could not have managed on her own.

  The third time Nance came in to check on her she found the girl as she had before, dreaming over the copper, holding her hands out over the steam to warm them.

  ‘What’s wrong with you? What’s that gormless grin? Hurry up.’

  But Evie didn’t hurry up because even though Mr Fenchurch was expecting guests it wasn’t until next week — for a fortnight his two daughters and their children all visiting at once. There was much to prepare. The everyday tablecloth was discovered to be too badly stained for further use but still had to be washed and dried today, starched, ironed and put away tomorrow, and now Nan was saying the next best was also in need of freshening before it took the other’s place.

  ‘How many children will there be, Nan?’ asked Evie to change the subject.

  ‘Three apiece,’ Nance said, ‘and each with another on the way.’

  ‘And what about the husbands? Are they bringing them?’

  ‘No. Just Jean and Louisa.’

  ‘Why not? Don’t they all get on with Mr Fenchurch?’

  ‘Nothing like that,’ Nance said shortly. All the Tyrells were too nosy.

  ‘Why then?’

  ‘Because Jean’s can’t leave the plantation and Louisa’s can’t leave his city job. They’re coming to see their brother’s memorial.’

  ‘Will the memorial be finished then?’

  ‘Who knows? Stop dillydallying, girl!’

  ‘Maybe take on another maid for the time they’re here,’ suggested Evie as they carried the heavy basket of tablecloths and napkins out to the lines that ran across the yard from the back verandah. ‘Me, I mean. I could stay in the house. Like a proper maid.’

  ‘You’d have to work harder than you are
now,’ Nance told her. ‘None of this mucking about.’ She had pegged a whole row in the time it took Evie to do three pillowcases. ‘We’ll send word to your mother, so she doesn’t worry.’

  ‘Oh, she never worries, Nan. I’m sixteen now and Ma only worries when I don’t show her the shillings, if you want the honest truth.’

  Nance didn’t but she got it anyway. Evie rattled on with the full gospel of Da dead drunk, of her brothers setting another unwanted bushfire, of another brother stealing a horse from the Blacks, of her mother suffering a miscarriage with what would have been the eleventh child — Nance knew much of it already since the Tyrells were a gabby family who broadcast their misfortunes and adventures. And Ma was her friend. In a way.

  ‘Be careful who you tell these stories to.’

  ‘No one cares,’ was Evie’s response. ‘Not even Father O’Donnell. He came to see why young Jimmy wasn’t christened and there’s three more babies since and none of them dunked.’

  This was gospel too, the priest knocked off his horse with a well-aimed bottle, which may or may not have been thrown by Ma Tyrell, depending on who was telling the story. Halfway back to Clunes he’d come to, lying across the saddle, flung there by unseen hands while still unconscious. He only made it home because his horse knew the way. The story was legend and happened five years ago now, though Evie told it with as much excitement as if it had happened yesterday.

  ‘Did he come to see Mr Fenchurch?’

  ‘No,’ said Nance.

  ‘The enemy was it, then?’

  Nance nodded. The basket was half-emptied now — the girl could do the rest.

  ‘Did the fat git show him the telegram? Or did he tell him straight out — Llew’s dead? How did he take it, the poor cove? Handsome enough for an old fellow, don’t you think so, Nan? Good teeth.’

  Two small hands appeared now above the washing line, smoothing the damp damask cloth along, and though these hands were chipped and work-worn they brought to Nance’s mind another pair, white and pure. The little voice chattered on while the cool, damp expanse hung between them.

  ‘Do you think he misses her still? And now he’s got his lad to mourn as well. He let me stroke the horse. She’s called Flora, isn’t she, Nan? And he asked me where I slept, when I stay over. It’s as if he’s suddenly noticed me, Nan, though it’s been two years now since I’ve been coming, since Llew went to the war. It’s because in that time I grew up, didn’t I, Nan?’

  Although Evie had an Irish lilt learned at her mother’s knee, there was the Australian note to it too, which combined to sing in Nance’s ears in another cadence altogether. Almost American. Once a man got a taste for a certain look of woman, then that was the type they would always prefer, like a favourite cake or biscuit or breed of dog; it became instinctive. She’d seen it happen again and again. Her own father had married one big-boned, red-headed woman, and after her death replaced her with another the same, a stepmother frequently taken for Nance’s real mother, since they were so alike. The Chinese grocer in Clunes had brought a third wife from Peking who bore no discernible difference to his first two wives, except for her relative youth. And Edmond had always had a taste for the dusky maidens. Now he’d gone so far as to marry one.

  Evie looked like Min, didn’t she? A little? A passing resemblance?

  ‘Don’t you be a silly girl, now,’ she said, going around the lines to take hold of Evie’s arm. The girl’s head barely reached her shoulder. ‘Next time you see Mr Fenchurch you smile and say hello but you keep walking, you keep busy, you keep back.’

  But Evie laughed and wrenched her skinny arm away, barely giving Nance a backward glance as she hurried back to the tub.

  5.

  THE MARRIED DAUGHTERS ARRIVED BY COASTERS, ONE FROM Brisbane and the other from Sydney, within a few hours of one another. Neither small ship had an easy crossing at the river bar south of Byron Bay, two of the Arkenstall children sick and having to be attended to by their nanny who was poorly herself. Neither Louisa nor Jean was ill — childhoods on riverbank and horseback had given them strong stomachs, even in these early months of pregnancy.

  Eight of the clan united in the rusting, listing, roasting-hot wharf house at Lismore. Cousin discovered cousin, some not met before and none remembered from meeting at their grandmother’s funeral, since the oldest were now only eight and the youngest barely walking. Tom and Cedric shook hands and five-year-olds Lorna and Clara kissed one another gravely and promised to be friends. The nanny stood by morosely, her black dress spattered.

  ‘And who is this?’ asked Jean, meaning the tall, fair woman who stood at her sister’s elbow.

  ‘My maid, of course. Rufina,’ said Louisa. ‘Did you not think to bring yours?’

  Jean hadn’t because she had none, not a lady’s maid; there were none to be had and no money to pay for one. Neither did she have her own nanny — though Louisa had promised to share hers, since there would be little help while they were at Jarulan.

  Louisa’s maid smiled at Jean and with a deferential glance at her employer murmured in heavily accented English, ‘Perhaps, if Mrs Arkenstall can spare me, I can help you with your hair or — I mean, if there is to be a party or …’

  Where was the maid from, surely not Germany? She had sounded German! What was Louisa thinking? She’d made no mention of this in her letters.

  ‘Are you …’ Jean began, and Louisa gave her a warning glance.

  ‘Yes. She is. What of it?’

  There was a bench set against the wall and Louisa went determinedly towards it, taking a book from her carpetbag. The maid, after meeting Jean’s eye and Jean knowing that she saw her fear and unease, followed her. She sat at the other end of the bench, her hands folded in her lap and looked out over the river.

  There was a long wait before the oil launch would arrive at its arranged time — almost four hours. Through most of it high spirits bubbled among the children. Tom and Cedric ran up and down the pier and along the river track, disappearing at one alarming stage for a full hour to explore. The little girls compared babies, taking their young siblings from the nanny and Jean and closely examining each hand and foot, drawing Jean into a comparison of eyes and hair. Louisa’s Lorna sang to her little brother in a high-pitched, true voice, angelic — and her mother never lifted her eyes once from her book to listen or praise her, so Jean did, and the child came to sit on her lap, almost dropping her damp burden. Jean told them stories to pass the time as they sat in the warm gloom. There were no windows, but shafts and pins of light showed through the rusted iron walls, which leaked a little when a shower of rain came over.

  A riverboat came in and some of the passengers recognised them, nodded and said hello. One old lady, possibly gone into her second childhood, came right up to Louisa and fingered the fine stuff of her dress as if she was a dressmaker’s dummy! Neither did Louisa like it when a young Aboriginal woman came along the narrow river track, leading two small boys by the hand, and the city cousins had run to meet them. So fascinated was Cedric that he had stood eye to eye with one of the little Black boys touching his hair, until Louisa called him away, and Jean had had to tell her there was no harm in it. A little later a group of watersiders came to unload a barge of timber, and Jean walked her fractious one-year-old down to see if the activity would distract him. One of the men openly stared at her, and at their piled quantity of luggage, and she was sure she heard the whispered name. Fenchurch. The Fenchurches. The Fenchurch girls. She wondered if they knew about the memorial her father was building, so far out of town.

  The thud of an engine drew her attention along the river, which was rain swollen enough to sit only a foot or two below the wharf. Llew’s launch, without Llew at the helm. The sisters remembered it from the last visit in 1911, for their mother’s funeral. In the six years since, the boat had lost its shine. Green mould streaked the once-white hull, the brass fittings were dull, the smoke stack blackened. A letter from Nan had mentioned how hard it was proving to keep up the h
ouse since Min’s death and their father’s melancholy set in — were they to find everything as ill kempt?

  If the sisters recognised the launch, they did not recognise the pilot, as he brought the boat neatly to the jetty, wash slapping up to their feet. One of the Blacks from the farm.

  ‘The boss is busy,’ was his greeting, with no apology forthcoming for their long wait, but the sisters were happy to be removed from their surrounds.

  *

  It was better on the launch heading up river, away from the steamy town. The rushing air dislodged some of the mosquitoes that had discovered them on the wharf. One had bitten the German maid on the chin. Her pale European skin mounded in a red flair, a rising core. She took from her purse a bottle of strongly scented cologne and dabbed it on — wincing — and Jean shook her head at her, called out over the thudding engine, ‘Won’t help!’

  Sighing, the girl sat down heavily between the two sisters in the stern, so that Jean was balanced almost on the very edge. She braced herself against the rails and gazed at the familiar much-missed scenery, the last of the little wooden houses strung out along the banks of the high river, the white river gums, then the dripping, thickening bush that extended from the surrounding hills to the water’s edge. There were dense groves of she-oaks, gums and candlenut trees, alive with squawking parrots. Tall thickset eucalypts had boughs that almost met overhead.

  Nan had sent a basket — a thermos of tea and corned beef sandwiches. The children were scolded and made to sit still and eat, which possibly was a mistake, since shortly after lumps of meat and shreds of bread made a reappearance, mostly over the side. Louisa’s baby, another pointy-faced, dark-haired one to match her other two, set up a clamour mostly drowned out by the engines. It wasn’t long before Jean’s plump fair baby — he looks just like the Pears baby, was little Lorna’s assessment — went out in sympathy and yowled louder and longer.