One Sunday (21 page)

As he loaded up his fork, he glanced at the brown medicine bottle still sharing his table, knowing it was a mistake giving it to Rosie during the day.

His knife and fork working, his teeth chewing, he reconsidered the problem of what he was going to do with her while Morgan was up here. Maybe that opiate would settle her down – or he could ask Jeanne to stay over. That girl was good with her, though what she was doing wandering around town when her little sister was dying, he did not know.

He sighed, wondering at the luck of life, and why, of all the chaps Russell Street could have sent up here, they'd had to send him Morgan. That mongrel had known Rosie as a girl, had been keen on her too, and jealous as hell when she'd preferred Tom to him. He'd had a better education, his folks had lived in a better house, but he'd always been a big nose with a body attached as an afterthought.

Hearing his voice on the telephone brought back a lot of memories, the way he'd taken command of the conversation right from the first word. He'd always done that, tried to take and keep command. Maybe that's why he'd done well in the army. He'd come up here today, see Rosie, say all the right things while sneering down that nose, and giving himself a pat on the back for narrowly escaping Tom's fate.

Tom ran a hand through his hair, rubbed at his stubbled chin. I'll have a shave, then ride out and talk to Reg Curtin – not far to ride, just over the bridge. One of those reliable blokes, Reg, he pretty much organised those pickers; he'd have a fair idea of where Vern Lowe would be picking today. The Squires weren't far from Curtin's, maybe a mile further on, down a private lane through private land. I'll call in there while I'm over the river, get it done with, offer my condolences, which might lead to some information. You never know, he thought.

Soothing, this sitting, pushing the pedals of his mind. He pushed his now clean plate back, considered a cup of tea and decided against rising to make it. Instead, he pulled a second chair close enough to reach with his feet – just for five minutes; he cleared elbow space on the table, propped his head on his palm and continued planning his afternoon. A couple of minutes with the feet up never did any harm after a big meal. He couldn't leave the house until Jeanne came by, anyway.

I ought to have a chat to Chris Reichenberg before Morgan gets here. Should have done that before now. I'll do that first, freewheel downhill, talk to Reichenberg, circle around by Kennedy's to the pickers' camp – wander back along the river to the bridge, cross over to Curtin's. His chin heavy on his palm, he allowed his eyelids to droop. Those eyes had been open for a long time; they deserved five minutes' rest from the glare.

‘Bliss,' he sighed, listening to a blowfly buzzing at the window. It wouldn't get in and blow his corned beef. He couldn't put it away, not until it cooled down – his block of ice was shrinking fast and anything hot placed in that chest would finish it off.

Four Squires, seated at the small dining room table, were served by Tilda Johnson, Ruby's twin. Any good looks on offer in the Johnson family had been allocated to those girls – better teeth, more attractive nose, hair a quieter red. It was her appearance that secured for Tilda the enviable position of serving maid.

Ruby had been trained as Olivia's personal maid – a limping maid in the bedroom being more acceptable than in the dining room.

Tilda returned to her mother in the kitchen, and lord of the manor Nicholas Squire looked at the roast lamb, baked potato, baked parsnip, green peas and mint sauce set out on a fine china plate. He glanced at his son. Arthur's meal had not been served on fine china. He ate with a spoon from a heavy, blue-ringed china bowl, his meat minced, his vegetables mashed. Difficult to chew without teeth, difficult to eat without sight. Difficult to watch him eat, but Nicholas watched his son's spoon dip, heard it scrape the bowl, saw the loaded spoon make its way to the gash of mouth, pulled low to the left by scars.

At the foot of the table, Olivia ignored her son, husband and daughter to concentrate on her meal and her glass of ruby red wine.

Helen, seated opposite Arthur, usually ate too quickly, then sat with folded arms waiting for the next course. Today she sat with folded arms staring at the decorative ceiling, tears trickling, and making no effort to touch her meal.

‘Try to eat something, Helen,' Nicholas said.

She shook her head, shook the pooling tears from her eyes, allowed them to run down her cheeks to her chin and drip onto her frock.

He'd asked her to dress suitably, and she'd clad herself in a gold frock that was little more than a petticoat. Nicholas sighed, followed his daughter's glance to the ceiling. A pleasant room this, its decorative ceiling not overdone. It had always been one of his favourites. He took up his knife and fork and ate slowly, grazing at the edges of his plate.

Arthur's spoon again scraped against the bowl. Overloaded, it spilled mashed green peas and gravy on its journey into his mouth.

Jennifer, Arthur's wife, had cringed from the sound and sight of mealtimes with her husband. Nicholas hadn't read that cringe accurately. The Bible said to love, honour and obey your husband; Jennifer had neither honoured nor obeyed. He blamed his daughter-in-law for Rachael's waywardness, even for her death. She had set a very poor example for his impressionable young daughters, then she'd stolen his cherished grandson and taken him to England. He'd spent a fortune in trying to find him.

A small portion of potato placed in his mouth, the fork placed down, Nicholas chewed thoughtfully. Certainly Jennifer's father had been the true culprit. He arranged that girl's escape, booked berths on a boat. That was the difficulty with grandchildren – they had two grandfathers.

Once it became obvious that his letters would not convince her to return, Nicholas had taken the family to England, feeling sure that Olivia and his daughters would bring Jennifer home. The boat trip had been tedious. He was not a good sailor. Six months in all he'd been gone from the estate, and many of those months spent in pleading with an irascible old fool who obviously knew the whereabouts of his daughter and grandson, though he refused to admit it.

Wasted effort. He returned to mayhem, Arthur's companion having left his post, Arthur distraught, left at the mercy of the Johnsons . . . It was difficult these days to find reliable hired help.

Arthur's current companion, Basil Clark, usually sat beside Arthur at family meals. This was his second long weekend off. Most of Arthur's companions saved their free days up, taking four consecutive days a month instead of one each week.

Helen was thinking of Arthur's companions. She could remember all of their names because she'd put them into alphabetical instead of chronological order. Burton, Clark, Duffy, Edwards, Frazer, Gordon, Hall, Henderson, Jones, King, Lawler, Morrison, Norris, Paterson, Pell, Porter, Stevens, Taylor, Tonkin, Tyler, Walters, Watts. Couldn't remember all of their faces. Mr Paterson she could remember, and old Mr King.

Rachael decided early that it wasn't worth getting to know their names because none of them stayed long. She giggled the first time Helen recited that list, and she said, ‘He will have to hire a Mr Albert or a Mr Zebo next. Given time, you'll have a full alphabet of them, Heli.' Then, last time they'd gone down to visit Aunt Bertha, Rachael had made Helen recite that list for her. They'd all laughed, even Olivia.

It was a year now since they'd last gone to Melbourne. It hadn't been such a fun time, because they'd stayed at Judge Cochran's house, and Percy had driven Rachael crazy all day, and Nicholas had driven her crazy at night with his lectures on Percy's future prospects – until she told him that she had no intention of ever marrying Percy, that if he was the last man on earth and the survival of the whole human race depended on her, that she'd prefer Nicholas mate her with a baboon. Then she'd raced off into the dark and ended up at Aunt Bertha's. They'd had to come home early.

Melbourne was the most wonderful place, because Arthur never went with them. It was a relief to sit at a table and not have to look at his scars and his mushed food and those blue-ringed bowls, purchased specifically for Arthur's meals – they didn't tip over when he scooped up his food. He'd spent years in hospitals. The other soldiers had returned long before Arthur, and he'd had to keep on going back to hospital for more operations. Like Jennifer, the doctors gave up. Nicholas couldn't give up. He'd written to a surgeon in America two months ago.

‘Why do I have to sit here today, Father?' Helen's nose and her head were so full of tears, her voice didn't sound like her own. He turned to her briefly, sighed, placed a small piece of parsnip in his mouth.

Rule: Squire daughters spoke when they were spoken to.

Rule: Squire daughters were seen, but not heard.

Rule: Squire daughters did not get themselves into trouble with Germans.

Helen and Rachael had known where babies came from, even before Jeanne Johnson explained the facts of life to them. How could they not have known when Mrs Johnson kept on having babies. Three years ago, when that last little Johnson was born, Jeanne, only fifteen, took over the kitchen for three days. She could do anything – even explain the details of procreation while preparing two chickens for roasting. She'd explained too why girls should never go out courting in the dark.

‘Things can get put in places where they're not supposed to get put until girls are married,' she'd said, the two chickens on their backs in the roasting dish, legs spread.

Rule: Squire daughters did not set foot in the kitchen, did not lean on that old table, eager for instruction.

A magical place, that dark kitchen. There were always jars of sultanas and bags of almonds, Arthur's forbidden liquorice hidden there. Always loaves of bread to cut thick slices from, then fry in dripping – and Jeanne. They'd learned more from her graphic instruction than they'd learned from their governess.

‘What do you mean, Jeanne?'

She picked up a carrot and used one of the chickens to illustrate exactly what she meant. ‘Which ruins a girl for life, of course, and also gets them in the family way.'

Easy to see why it may have ruined them for life. Helen swore off marriage and babies that day. Rachael didn't. She'd got in the family way last September, and she'd been excited about it.

‘Now he'll have to let us get married, Heli. We're going to run away to Melbourne, though, until he gets over the shock.'

‘He won't let you marry Chris! Not in a million years. He'll put you away.'

‘No he won't. He'll never allow his grandchild to be born out of wedlock.'

‘He'll never allow you to bring a German into this family either. You know that!'

‘He'll have to. You know what he was like when Jennifer took little Raymond away. He'll want my baby. He won't care too much who its father is. He never had one – or his father never married his mother – which is why we're Squires. There'll be some fireworks for a while, I know that, so it will be better if I'm not here while they're going off,' she said.

Better for her!

September, a star-studded sky but no moon, those trees outside the window looking black, and black fear crawling in Helen's spine. Nicholas would be worse than livid. He'd have to give up on having grandsons who might one day be Lord Somebody or the Earl of Something – if there was a plague in England. Or maybe he wouldn't…

‘I'm going with you, Rae. I'm going to join a convent.'

‘Nuns spend all day praying, they end up with rheumatism and corns on their knees – and you're not old enough.'

‘I'm not staying here. He's going to be hiss-spitting crazy.'

‘Come then. Chris won't mind – but you'll have to climb down that rope ladder, in the dark, on Friday night, because we're catching the Saturday morning train.'

‘I can climb.'

She hadn't been able to climb. Nothing had gone the way they'd planned. Nothing. In the end, Rachael had married who Nicholas told her to marry.

Rule: Squire daughters obeyed blindly.

‘Why?'

She was thinking ‘why'. She must have said it, because Nicholas glanced at her.

Why
had probably been her first word, which might have been the reason her lower lip had grown so full, bunched up since infancy. He'd never replied. No questions were answered in this house. No one spoke of the five babies Olivia had lost at birth, five sons. They were in the cemetery, with names and dates. Most had been born between Rachael and Freddy, who had run away to fly aeroplanes when he was seventeen. Helen would have been four at that time and she couldn't even remember him. She couldn't remember Arthur before the war, and he hadn't joined the army until the war was almost over.

She glanced down at Arthur's empty bowl, allowing her swollen eyes to slowly creep higher, up his fine cotton shirt to the navy and white spotted cravat – and the puckered yellow centipede scar crawling out of it, and into the hollow where his jawbone should have been, crawling beneath the smoky lens of large spectacles and disappearing into the cavity of his lost eye. People wore spectacles so they could see better. Arthur wore spectacles so people couldn't see him as well.

His hair used to cover a lot of the damage. He'd worn it long, and Jennifer would comb it to the left side, over the brow and the mutilated ear. It had covered the side of his scalp where no hair grew, but he was going bald. Soon he'd have no hair at all.

Nicholas still had his hair. Arthur must have inherited his bald head from his grandfather, or his great-grandfather – not that anyone ever spoke about the Squire male ancestors. There were some stains on the bleached white underskirt of the Squire name. When you can't remove a stain and you can't discard the stained garment, you have to appliqué over it, cover it with prissy embroidery, though the person wearing that garment knows it's still there. Some of the older people in Molliston knew about the Squire stain too.

Helen had grown up imagining Molly Squire to have been a rich English widow who had come to Australia with a dozen servants, bought the land and built herself a mansion. Until Rachael showed her a handwritten rhyme, she'd known nothing about the Squires' convict ‘stain'.

They'd had to hide it from Nicholas, and there was only one safe place – in their cubbyhouse, underneath the quince tree, in Mary Shelley's
Frankenstein
, in a kerosene tin bucket.

Then, one night at the dinner table when Nicholas was singing Percy's praises, Rachael recited a few lines of the rhyme, then asked Nicholas if it was true that his grandfather had been hung for highway robbery and murder. She'd been marched to her room and locked in.

It was probably true. Gwyneth Murphy learnt the rhyme from her great-grandmother who had lived in Molliston before it was even a town; she had helped ferry travellers across the river before the bridge was built.

Helen sniffed as she wiped her face with her serviette. Nicholas turned to her, shook his head, but how could she not sniff? Her nose kept dripping, even if it was blocked solid.

‘Tears won't bring them back,' Olivia said.

A breath sobbed in through her mouth and Helen looked at her mother. ‘I can't eat, Mummy. I can't swallow. Please make him let me leave this table.'

Olivia glanced at Nicholas. Again he shook his head. She looked at her plate – there was not a morsel left on it – then she stood, walked heavily with her wineglass to the sideboard where she refilled it. Poor Olivia, she was too big to hide in Molly's wardrobe or she might have hidden there instead of in a wine bottle. She'd started hiding in that bottle when Jennifer ran away with Raymond, or that's the first time Helen and Rachael noticed. For months, Nicholas had been white hot, hissing furious. He had been deceived and bested by refined, soft-spoken, obedient Jennifer, and he'd had no inkling of what was in her mind. No one had.