Lillipilly Hill (2 page)

In her later work, Spence turned to urban settings, and stories about identity, religious bigotry, class, gender, autism, homosexuality. But however complex or controversial the issues, she wrote about them as children understand them, which is often largely implicitly. Spence said of herself, ‘I cannot recall any point in time when I ceased once and for all to be a child, or another when I suddenly turned into an adult.' This is perhaps her greatest gift: to truly remember, and then to evoke, the child's point of view.

For Spence, leaving childhood was experienced as an acute loss—not a loss of innocence exactly, but a loss of brave intensity, of something shining. She was cynical about the triumphant progress to maturity, saying that ‘it seems to me that by suppressing the child in ourselves, we run the risk of denying the best part of us'. In this gentle, emotional novel of an Australian rural childhood, Spence has captured a enduring vision of that brightness, that ‘best part'.

Lillipilly Hill

1

Problems and Plans

Holding their breath, the children listened for the splash.

‘There they go!'

It was a good, satisfying splash. The creek water was high after the February rain, and the Wilmot buggy was heavy, and well loaded with Miss Oliver's luggage. The children were silent until the clip-clop of Barrel's hooves, and the rolling of the wheels, were no more than faint echoes in the gully, dying away along the Blackhill road.

‘So that's that,' said Harriet. ‘We won't see her again.'

Rose-Ann sniffled.

‘You shouldn't sound so pleased, Harriet. She's been our governess for four whole years, and you liked her—you said you did.'

Harriet continued to smile, and to swing her long, black-booted legs as she sat on the top bar of the gate.

‘I know. But think of no more lessons, at least for a few weeks. Father says it will be frightfully hard to find a new governess here. He'll have to go to Sydney to look for one.'

‘Will he take us with him?' asked Rose-Ann hopefully.

‘Of course not. It's nearly a day's journey, and it would cost too much to take us.'

They were quiet again for a few minutes. Rose-Ann was thinking wistfully of Sydney, and the shops, and the omnibuses, and the steamers on the Harbour. She could not understand why her father had not stayed there, instead of bringing them all on to this strange place after only three days of Sydney's delights.

Harriet stared down through the trees at the half-seen water of the creek, glinting fiercely where the hot sun touched it.

‘You know,' she said, with unusual seriousness, ‘I do think Miss Oliver might have stayed longer. We've only been here a month. How can you get to know a place properly in a month?'

Aidan spoke for the first time, putting aside his book. He was sprawled in the shade at the bottom of the gate, disliking the sunlight as intensely as Harriet rejoiced in it.

‘She knew it well enough to know she could never live here. You can't blame her, can you?'

‘No,' said Rose-Ann, looking mournful again. ‘I don't want to live here, either. Nobody would.'

‘Oh, don't be silly,' said Harriet impatiently. ‘A whole month, and we've never been farther than the bottom of the hill! Do you know
anything
about this place? Why! I'm sure neither of you even know what it's called.'

Aidan and Rose-Ann gave her identical glances of pained surprise.

‘Of course we do,' said Aidan. ‘The property is called Mount Agnes. It was named for Uncle John's wife.'

‘That's just its Sunday name,' said Harriet scornfully. ‘Do you know what everyone calls it? Lillipilly Hill. And I can tell you why, too.'

Aidan, annoyed by his young sister's air of triumph, was none the less interested. Rose-Ann merely looked bewildered.

‘What a funny name! I don't like it at all.'

‘It's because of these trees,' said Harriet, gesturing to right and left.

Aidan stared at them, really seeing them for the first time. There were two, one on either side of the wooden gate. They were big enough to climb, with straight, greyish trunks and a tangle of branches clothed in stiff, shiny, green leaves. At present they bore round, wine-red berries, many of which had fallen and lay crushed beneath the children's boots.

‘I've never seen trees like that before,' he admitted. ‘I suppose they're called lillipillies, are they?'

‘Yes, they are. And these two have been here since Uncle John built the house,' explained Harriet. ‘So the people living in the village called it Lillipilly Hill. Boz told me.'

‘Boz?' repeated Aidan in surprise. ‘But he never talks, unless sometimes to Polly.'

‘He talks to
me
,' said Harriet proudly. ‘I just keep on asking questions. I go down to the cowshed at milking time, and then he can't run away.'

‘But you aren't allowed to play down there,' protested Rose-Ann. ‘And it's a barn, anyway.'

‘It is not,' retorted Harriet. ‘It's never called a barn here. That's just what I mean—you two don't know
anything.
'

‘Rose-Ann mightn't know very much,' said Aidan with dignity. ‘She's only ten, and she doesn't keep on asking so many questions that people's heads start to buzz—like you, Harriet. But I know a great deal about Uncle John, and how the convicts built the house, and how he left it to Father because Father was his favourite nephew. Father told me all about it, months ago, before we even sailed.'

‘That's all like a history lesson,' said Harriet. ‘We have to find out what Lillipilly Hill is like
now.
'

‘I think you've been out in the sun too long,' said Aidan unkindly. ‘Where's your sun-bonnet?'

Almost at once, his question was echoed from the house.

‘Harriet, where's your sun-bonnet? Put it on immediately!'

Harriet jumped off the gate on to the garden path, and snatched the hated white bonnet off a straggling rosebush. Aidan's commands could comfortably be ignored, but not those of her father, who stood now on the wide, stone-flagged veranda, wrinkling his face against the glare from outdoors.

‘Come inside, children. Your mother and I want to talk to you.'

‘What's happened?' whispered Aidan, rising and brushing grass-seeds from his jacket. ‘What have you been doing, Harriet?'

‘Nothing,' answered Harriet indignantly. ‘Why should it always be me?'

Aidan glanced at his two sisters. As usual, they were dressed alike in gingham dresses and holland pinafores, but there all resemblance ceased. Rose-Ann's spotless bonnet was set squarely on shining fair curls, while Harriet's had been tossed anyhow on top of her dishevelled mop of sandy hair. Rose-Ann's skin was as smooth and pale as when she had left London four months ago, while Harriet's thin, pointed face was red with sunburn, and already beginning to freckle. Her pinafore was stained with blackberry juice, and one bootlace was undone.

‘Your looking-glass will tell you why,' said Aidan, leading the way towards the house.

Harriet glared at the rose-bushes, seeing only the devouring weeds and overgrown branches where once Great-Aunt Agnes had enjoyed beauty and order. More than a year had passed since John Wilmot's death, and Boz, the caretaker, had had little time to spare for gardening. Beyond the rose-garden, the lovingly-planted English shrubs were engulfed in a sea of lucerne, and a fine variety of weeds with unknown names. Only the hardy geraniums bloomed still along the edge of the veranda, and a blue convolvulus climbed one of the hardwood posts.

Francis Wilmot watched his children come down the path in the brilliant sunlight.

‘We are having a cup of tea in the sitting-room,' he said. ‘Polly has put out milk and cake for you.'

Agreeably surprised at such refreshment in the middle of the morning, the children entered the broad hall which cut the house in half. The polished cedar floor and the unpapered wooden walls gave a feeling of coolness, and made the hall so dark that the children blinked, momentarily blinded. The sitting-room was at the front of the house, with shuttered french windows opening on to the veranda. It was a square, solid room, furnished with the handsome, heavy, much-polished pieces that Aunt Agnes had brought with her from her old home in London. Its neat, rather sombre air was in startling contrast to the bright untidiness glimpsed through the western windows.

Mrs Wilmot drew Rose-Ann and Harriet down beside her on the sofa. She looked cool and immaculate in a lilac-coloured dress with a little high, white collar. Side by side, she and Rose-Ann were pleasingly alike, just as Aidan and his father, facing each other across the massive stone fireplace, appeared to be cut to an identical pattern.

‘I just don't look as if I belonged to this family,' reflected Harriet. It was an interesting thought—if she was not a Wilmot, then who was she? A lost princess, perhaps? Or a daughter of the wilds, like Lorna Doone?

She caught sight of the cake-stand, and for the time being, at least, was content to be a Wilmot. It was a currant cake. Polly had a light hand with most kinds of cake, but currant cakes were really her masterpieces. Harriet took a large slice—one of her mother's complaints about Polly was that she would never learn elegance in her serving of food. Harriet had no such fault to find.

‘I expect you were very sorry to see Miss Oliver go,' sighed Mrs Wilmot. ‘She felt so badly about parting from you after all this time.'

Rose-Ann made noises of agreement, and Harriet started to wriggle.

‘If we get a new governess, Father, what about me?' asked Aidan. ‘I'm too old for governesses now.'

Mr Wilmot frowned into his tea-cup.

‘Of course you are. I'm only too well aware of it. You're part of the whole problem.'

‘What problem?' demanded Harriet, confident now that she was not to be rebuked for any wrong-doing. Her visits to the cowshed had apparently not been discovered.

‘The problem, Harriet, is one of money—to put it briefly.'

The children, surprised at being taken thus into adult confidence, gazed at their father inquiringly.

‘You see, I don't think we can afford a new governess, still less a tutor for Aidan,' explained Mr Wilmot. ‘I thought it best for you to know all this—you are no longer in the nursery. And what I am about to decide will affect the future of all of you.'

‘No governess and no tutor,' murmured Aidan. ‘That only leaves school.'

‘For all of us?' asked Harriet eagerly.

‘I'm afraid school is out of the question too—it would have to be boarding-school, you see. Your mother and I simply did not understand, when we agreed to leave home and take up farming here as Uncle John wished, just how difficult it would be to live in a civilized fashion. The property yields very little income—Uncle John was a far wealthier man than I. If we stayed here, it would be impossible for you children to have the education we want you to have. It would also mean that your mother had to work far too hard to keep the house in order, without suitable help. And you would all be condemned to live cut off from the kind of society to which you have been accustomed. In short, I think that I must sell the property and take you all home.'

Home—Harriet shut her eyes and tried to remember what the word meant. A tall, blank-faced, sedate old house in a quiet Kensington square. Walks
in the Gardens in autumn, just before they sailed—the trees all brown and gold, and the sun dusky pink through the mist. Fires in the schoolroom, and muffins for tea. The jogging and rattling of tradesmen's vans in the square, and the brisk tip-tap of her father's feet as he returned from his mysterious work in the City—mysterious because it had never been explained to Harriet, the only one who sometimes wondered where the money came from to buy her clothes and pay for dancing lessons and pantomimes.

She opened her eyes, and looked out through the door. The sun, nearing its peak, still poured its relentless heat on the tangled garden. But beneath the willow near the side fence, the grass seemed cool and inviting, and beyond the willow and the rocky hill-side lay a whole new world that Harriet had hardly begun to know. Surely ‘home' was the place where one liked to live?

‘And then would I go to Rugby, after all?' asked Aidan.

‘Perhaps. We would have to wait and see.' There was a trace of disappointment in Mr Wilmot's voice. He was proud of his son's cleverness, his studious habits, his steady ambition—but now he wanted to find something more than that. Yet how could he expect the boy to understand his father's feelings about Mount Agnes? Aidan would merely be puzzled to learn
that to Francis Wilmot, giving up his uncle's property meant the end of a lifelong dream. And that the prospect of returning to book-keeping in the Wilmot family firm was like a vision of slavery.

‘And I could go back to Mrs Christie's dancing-class,' said Rose-Ann with satisfaction. ‘And wear my party dress again.'

‘“One-two-three, one-two-three,
do
try harder, Harriet, dear”,' Harriet muttered, savagely mimicking Mrs Christie's ladylike voice.

‘Harriet, you must leave the room if you're going to be rude,' said her mother sternly. ‘Mrs Christie tried very hard to make you into a young lady with pretty manners, which is what we want you to be. That is why your father is prepared to take you home to London.'

‘Why can't I be a young lady here?' protested Harriet.

‘How would you ever learn? The nearest school for young ladies is in Blackhill, eight miles away—how would you reach it? You can be sure that we have thought of every possibility. And I, for one, will be very pleased when we are all settled at home again. So do try and be a help, Harriet.'

Harriet lapsed into glum silence. She thought she caught a gleam of sympathy in her father's expression, but she wasn't sure.