Jarulan by the River Read online

  Nothing had been said about how they would proceed with the family here, and Nance felt it wise not to wait for orders from Louisa, who seemed slow to catch on to the fact that it was just Nance and Evie to do the cooking and waiting, and Evie not trained or natural to it. There was something wrong with Evie this morning, arriving in the kitchen with swollen eyes and Llew’s dog at her heels, which Nance had sent outside immediately.

  ‘Dogs in the kitchen!’ she’d scolded.

  Evie seeped tears. ‘But she’s my only friend in the world,’ for which Nance could only scold her further.

  ‘There’ll be none of that round here, my girl. Feeling sorry for yourself!’

  She’d lifted the teapot from the hob and poured the girl a cup, which Evie drank sinking to a chair as if her legs were weak, as if she was going to be no use at all.

  Nance bided her time, let her finish her tea, before she got her up to get the milk from the safe. She could hear the children now, coming along the hall from where they’d been taken to see Mr Fenchurch on the verandah.

  By the time they came in at her back she was slinging out the porridge. Jean appeared to set them around the table. Gently, she lifted the little ones to the bench seat and cautioned them to be careful, that breakfast was hot, and Nance saw how her yellow and white dress was as worn and old-fashioned as yesterday’s pink one. Life was much harder for this sister, then, than it was for Louisa, who appeared at the kitchen door now with an impatient expression on her wide, healthy, sun-burnished face. Louisa had always been a woman for outdoor pursuits. In the long-ago days when there was a full staff, Nance would be recruited as umpire on the tennis court — the young Fenchurches were mad for the game. Louisa had worn a pair of her brother’s short trousers and played always to win, and usually did, game after game, even against her brothers, until they grew taller than her.

  And here she was, winning again, while the nanny sat the babies on her lap and Jean waited on them, bringing the infants a shared bowl. A mistake, since one of them had a nose streaming with a cold, but Nance forbore to say anything. At least the children’s breakfasts hadn’t had to be carried upstairs, as the bossy Sydney nanny had suggested. Perhaps Miss Louisa had been the source of that idea and that was why she seemed as though she was on the lookout for a shindy. If the girl was once again ten years old, Nance would have given her a smack.

  ‘Has anyone seen Rufina?’ Louisa asked, scowling.

  The little girl Lorna called loudly for sugar and the nanny burned one of the babies’ mouths or pinched its leg or something, because there was a sudden unholy wailing taken up by first one baby and then the other, in sympathy. If Jean answered her sister, Nance did not hear it. She certainly did not answer, and neither did Evie, returning from the safe, drooping at the door with a jug of milk warming in her lazy hands. She gazed disconsolately at the screaming babies.

  ‘Hop to it.’ Nance gave her a poke with the wooden spoon. ‘Go and get some more coal for the range.’

  ‘Nan,’ Louisa shouted above the racket, ‘have you seen Rufina this morning?’

  Rufina must be the German maid. Jean had told her there was a German and that Louisa had also had a German friend who had been locked away and that Rufina came from her.

  It wasn’t right. She shouldn’t be here. It would be the talk of the district.

  Nance rubbed butter into flour, the biggest of the Delft basins set up on the bench to make the scones, and wondered why on earth Louisa would have chosen to have a German maid when a German killed her brother and Sydney must be full of Australian girls looking for work. When she next looked up she saw that Louisa had gone and registered also that the infernal noise had stopped. It had persisted in her head somehow, even though the infants were quiet. Jean had taken her baby from the nanny and was sitting with him at her breast, having turned a chair into the window for privacy. Peace.

  Thank you, Lord.

  This was the nicest time of the day in the kitchen, when the sun glided briefly by the high south-facing window and disappeared before it got too hot. The brass of the stove gleamed like gold; there was the sweet smell of hot milk and the day’s bread cooling on the wide stone sill, the window open onto the garden. It was to be a soft day, damp and grey, gentle and misty, the sky blooming grey and white with coming rain, puffy and slow.

  Late May and roses blooming still in the overgrown garden beyond, so as to be against the kitchen windows. For Nan. Pink and yellow. Tea roses and climbers.

  My Min.

  Beside her, Evie came to lean against the bench and dreamily watched the rise and fall, rise and fall of flour in the bowl, the soft butter drawing it together, the soft white hills and valleys growing steadily yellower and crumblier. How her hands ached. The girl could do it, and Nance could sit with a cup of tea and perhaps get hold of a baby. She could nurse the little fella, get him to smile, forget his cold.

  ‘Like this, see? Fingertips only — rub rub rubbity rub. Try not to let the flour reach your palms. Quick and firm, like this.’

  She took hold of Evie’s hands and lowered them to the flour, noticing too late how black the nails were, though the skin was clean enough from the sink.

  Nance sat down and took Louisa’s baby from the Sydney nanny, who was in any case intent on eating her own porridge, spooning it fast into a wide mouth. She was plump, a bigger woman than Nance, though she was the same height.

  Worked too hard my whole darned life to be fat like you.

  It was as peaceful as it could be, the soft whisper of Evie’s industry behind her, the scraping of spoons in bowls. Jean’s child — too old to be still at the breast — had gone to sleep, cradled in her mother’s arms.

  The little boy gazed at Nance for a moment and she saw that his eyes were bright and healthy, that he was not so sick after all. She took a clean napkin from the drawer set into the table and wiped his nose and thought this one was more like Min, darker, small boned. Or was that the father, the rich banker?

  The child wriggled to be put down, and hit the ground running, taking off through the kitchen door and down the hall, the two four-year-old girls going after him, motherly, concerned, at speed — ‘Gordon, Gordon, come back, Gordon!’

  Nan found that she was grinning. How lovely it was to have them here, to have children in the house again, to be close to the life they brought.

  12.

  THE STABLE WAS THE OLDEST BUILDING ON THE LAND, OLDER than the house, and the staff quarters had been built against its northern wall. In all her life Louisa had never been inside the tiny rooms: their father had forbidden them for the servants’ sake and their own. True, on rainy days in the years before her marriage she had sometimes cut along towards the stables under the narrow overhang past the washhouse and boiler and on past the quarters. Only one of the five doors was fully closed. Rufina’s, she supposed. A slump had formed in the shallow step up to the verandah and almost sent her flying, but the skills honed from years of sneaking up on her younger siblings stayed with her and she landed as quietly as she could outside the closed door. There was a crack in the uncurtained panel of glass set into it, so covered with soot and grime from the boiler and Jarulan’s chimneys that she could see nothing until she licked a finger and formed an eyehole.

  In the small gloomy room a tuft of brown grass grew high in a corner, a flimsy, stained wall subsided against a pile of wooden crates. Surely Rufina wouldn’t have slept here? Why hadn’t she come to ask to sleep in the house? Louisa had no idea the accommodation was this poor. Nan had given no indication, just said the maids were out here.

  And one must not forget that Rufina is only a maid.

  And there she was, barely visible, on a narrow pit-sawn bunk against the back wall. She had a book angled to the light from the pane in the door, the only window, and after a moment seemed to perceive it inhabited. The book lowered and she peered above it, which filled Louisa with fury at the injustice of a maid lying in bed, when her employer’s day felt half-over already. She flun
g open the door and Rufina leapt up to stand by the bed. An attempt had been made to hide the book under what appeared to be a very fine white coverlet of drawn threadwork and French embroidery.

  ‘Where did you get that?’

  ‘My mother made it for me when — ’

  ‘I mean the book.’ Edith, read Louisa. Mirth.

  ‘There.’

  The crates against the walls were full of books, her mother’s, she supposed. This was where he’d put them. What on earth for?

  But Rufina was more arresting than the exiled library, and Louisa’s eyes were drawn back. What a nightgown! Nainsook. She took a pinch of the fabric between forefinger and thumb, palest blue fine cotton, with pink satin ribbons woven into the collar and white broderie anglaise trimming the wide sleeves. There were pintucks and a bodice of delicate smocking, white and cream. It was more exquisite than any nightgown Louisa possessed, despite intensive perusal of Sydney’s finest drapers, salons and outfitters.

  ‘And this too? A gift from your mother?’ Louisa gave it a little tug and felt a satisfying pop, a tiny stitch coming away further up, at the yoke.

  ‘What of it?’ Rufina asked, her voice hard. Any shame she’d felt at Louisa’s entry appeared to have flown. ‘Do you think I have stolen it?’

  ‘Perhaps you helped yourself after poor Irma Schneider was taken away.’

  Rufina said nothing though her gaze did not waver from Louisa’s, and Louisa had the surprising thought that her maid was resenting her intrusion.

  ‘After all, you took the book without asking.’

  Rufina was silent. It seemed she was not going to enter into an argument, much less defend herself, and quite suddenly Louisa found herself also struck dumb. Two can play at that game, she thought, though it seemed like cheating. Life should always be exposed to bright daylight; there should be no dark corners or unnecessary shadows. It was best to have everything out. Otherwise one ended up like Min, tied to a chair in a darkened room when the layers of untruths became too difficult to bear.

  ‘Upstairs. In half an hour.’ She nodded curtly, turned and went out across the yard, quickly but careful of the slippery bricks, holding up her skirts.

  It was beginning to rain again, wispy, gentle, so softly she barely felt it.

  13.

  EVIE HAD BEEN SET TO DIGGING THE POTATOES AND THEN TO peeling them for the baked dinner at noon, but the potatoes with their shrouds of clinging soil, and the pumpkins with their cargoes of miscarried seeds, only made her think further of death. The subject had occupied her since Fenchurch had left her in the early hours of the morning and she had thrown the plate. What if her aim had been true and she had killed him? Then what? She had a vision of herself in Clunes pokey, or maybe taken further afield to Lismore or Casino, or even to Sydney to the gallows. Evie Tyrell swinging by the neck. Plenty of Tyrells had done the same in the old country and she could do it here to keep up the family tradition.

  ‘Hurry up there!’ Nan put her head in at the scullery door. ‘Nice and clean. Pick out the eyes.’

  The potatoes were to be first rolled in flour before they were set around the joint. Evie’s stomach rumbled. No one had thought to give her any porridge and she hadn’t seen fit to take some, even after she saw the kind sister waiting on the nanny. Worse than a dog. Even the dogs got fed. She felt like breaking something. Another plate. She’d knock about like this for a little while, just for the extra shillings, but not for long, not forever. Forever like the gallows were forever, like the penury her mother endured on the Tyrell run was forever, with barely enough to eat and never a new dress.

  When did she last taste legal mutton, wondered Evie. Not since years ago, before the wool had rotted on her father’s sheep and the animals had sickened and died, the ones that hadn’t already succumbed to flystrike or heatstroke in high summer. The Fenchurches were more scientific and kept a small flock among their thousands of cattle. The dead son had been famous for keeping them healthy with dips and doses. She wished the whole family of Fenchurches would go to blazes.

  The little scullery window was open for the breeze and voices carried from out by the stables, Matthew’s among them, and the stamping of horses. There were the high excited tones of the young boys and the barking of Llewellyn’s dog, but joyous now, not the strained despairing howl come from days on the chain. She listened for Matthew’s voice again, heard him tell the boys not to drag on the reins, and thought that she should leave tonight, but that she could give him one more chance and if he was just as cold-hearted she’d leave him in the lurch. She’d take the dog with her. Da had been bad with dogs, indulged them, entered a battle of wills. Her brothers needed a good one and they’d like the shepherd. They’d like it more than what would arrive later, in January. About then. If she was gone it was only a couple of weeks, nothing, a seed, but she felt it, a dread that lay flexing under her ribs like a new muscle. The smells of the kitchen and scullery were more intense. The world was brighter, harder, as if it had grown suddenly into a louder, more determined version of itself, one that she had always known was there but hadn’t entered. Did every girl know this early? This fast, so soon, so early in the moon?

  Ma had. She used to let it be known that another little Tyrell was on its way so early on that the baby came slower than Christmas. And when they did come, how Ma had lavished her tenderness on them. The older ones would catch the longing eye of the third one up, or fourth, the child still hopeful for her loving on her lap. Ma would know Evie was gone the moment she set eyes on her.

  When she carried the potatoes through to the kitchen it felt as though the heat leapt away from the range like an evil witch, slap up against her in a single bound, fierce and sharp as teeth, turning her guts with fear and hunger. Red-faced and sweating, Nan was hefting the joint out of the open door and the rich sister, Miss Snot Louisa, was striding past back to the stairs. But a thought must have occurred to her before she got there, because she doubled back to call out from the hall, ‘When Rufina comes in, could you ask her to bring my coffee up?’

  And Nan, poor cow, owned by the Fenchurches body and soul, nodded. A slavvy, that’s what Ma said she was. Worked to the bone. Dumb as a donkey. Nan didn’t mutter or roll her eyes at the extra demand. After a moment she left the joint steaming on the table and went after Louisa, wiping her hands on her apron and calling, ‘Aren’t you going out to the memorial? They’re leaving soon.’

  ‘I’ve asked them to wait.’ Louisa’s voice floated from the landing. ‘Send Rufina to Mother’s room as soon as possible.’

  When Nan returned to the kitchen she was shaking her head. ‘He’ll be champing at the bit.’

  She said it so quietly that Evie barely heard her, but she felt a sudden lulling, a comfort, Nan talking about him in that soft, intimate voice. She remembered him as he was the day she met him on the drive, kind and stern, rich and old, high on a beautiful horse with more silver on her than a queen.

  And then again as he was last night, eager for her, his heart open. The feel of him in the dark.

  The new tendon under her rib softened and melted away and she thought perhaps she’d be staying after all. If only the day would hurry through, the mountain of food prepared for the family cooked and served, the afternoon of drudge and tedium passed and night falling, then she could wait in her bed listening for him, for the click of the screen door on the back porch, for his hollow step along the verandah, his quick strides across the yard.

  And she would try again. Did he think it was just calf love? It was for real. She would marry him if he asked her.

  The German was at the kitchen door and Evie wondered for the first time if she had heard anything of last night. Yesterday she’d seen young Tommy showing the other children a new penny got from her for checking her quarters for snakes, and it was then that Evie had realised she’d been put in with her, hopefully not in one of the thin-walled adjoining rooms, but one further along. The next room had old books in it anyway, trunks and crates and boxes. H
ers had cracked china but less of it, and she’d only chosen that room because Nan had told her it was the most watertight, though what would Nan know as she’d slept inside the house ever since Mrs Fenchurch was ailing?

  Nan gave the directions to the sitting room, and told her also that Evie would bring the coffee up. The German looked hard at Evie, almost curling her upper lip with disgust, and Evie saw that she did know, that she had heard them, perhaps even seen something. What did it matter? She couldn’t care less. But even as she felt herself rally, as she put down the basin of potatoes and straightened her back, she had a vision of her mother coming to tell Fenchurch of the situation. To ask for money.

  Nan went back to the roast while Evie made the coffee the way she’d been taught only a fortnight ago — it felt like years! — pouring the hot water on the grounds in the tall, earthenware coffeepot and setting the tray with sugar and cream. Up the two flights of stairs she went and along the corridor to Mrs Fenchurch’s big old room, which she entered without knocking, her hands being full, and in any case the door was ajar. Flowered curtains hung at the windows, the bed was draped in a mosquito net of the purest white. Clothes were scattered everywhere; a string of pearls lay in the centre of the Turkish rug, as if laid there as part of the design.

  At the dressing table, Rufina was helping her employer out of her day dress and into a divided skirt, while Louisa’s own fingers flew at the buttons of a white riding blouse with a black bow at the neck. The only sign that she had noticed Evie come in was the tiniest of nods, reflected in the mirror, to direct her to the small table set by the fireplace, where Evie found herself stranded. Her feet refused to turn around and carry her out of the room. A silk chemise lay across the back of one of the fireside chairs, rippling in the light like a river stone under water. She could hear Louisa’s voice running on behind her, quiet enough for only Rufina to hear the words, and it sounded haranguing, as if Louisa was scolding her. And there was a slightly bored tone to it, as if Louisa could barely be bothered but felt she must.