Requiem for a Wren (33 page)

~ I've been wondering what sort of place a sheep farm in Australia can be. I suppose it's very hot and people riding round the desert in big hats on horses, and boomerangs, and black people. And billabongs whatever they may be, like in the song. I don't think I'd be much good in a place like that, but I'd feel now that I was letting Bill down if I didn't go and see if I was needed there at all.

~ Anyway, it'd mean another month on a ship. I've been down to the library looking at an atlas. Honolulu, Fiji, New Zealand, Sydney, I should think. It would be a marvellous trip, anyway.

On the next page of the diary she had totted up her financial situation to the best of her ability. Her aunt's house had sold to the Pasmaniks for eighteen thousand dollars. Unravelling her somewhat tangled accountancy and putting together the money from the sale of the house and her English capital, she seems to have possessed a total of about eight thousand pounds in English money, a sum which she considered as indecent riches.

She saw Dr Ruttenberg again, but there is only a short mention of that meeting in the diary.

~ June 4th. I saw Dr Ruttenberg again today. He gave me a medical check-up, stethoscope and blood pressure and all the rest of it and we had a talk about things. I told him I was going to take his advice and take a sea trip to Australia and perhaps meet brother Alan and find out how Bill's parents were, but I wasn't going to barge in if everything was quite all right as it probably will be. In that case I should come back to Seattle because I'll have to come back here, because it will take the lawyers about six months to settle up Aunt Ellen's estate and they can be

doing that while I'm away. He asked me to come and see him when I got back. And then he said that in his experience a woman without family duties was generally an unhappy woman until she got adjusted to what was an unnatural condition, and that was really all that was the matter with me. I suppose he's right. He generally is.

~ I went to the shipping office this morning. There's a ship called Pacific Victor loading bulldozers and earth-moving machinery for Sydney which is due to sail in about ten days' time. She has accommodation for four or five passengers, and they don't think she's full up but they're not sure. They've given me a letter of introduction to the captain. She's in a dock on the East Side somewhere by Lander St. I couldn't go today because of seeing Dr Ruttenberg, but I shall go and find her tomorrow and see if she's got a berth.

~ June 17th. We sailed from the East Waterway this morning. This isn't half such a nice ship as the Winterswijk was, much older and dirtier and slower, not so well kept. However, I've got a two-berth cabin to myself and it's lovely being at sea again. It's two thousand four hundred sea miles to Honolulu and we do about ten knots, so it will take about ten days.

There was nothing of any particular interest in the diary until she disembarked at Sydney. At Suva a young married couple called Anderson came on board for the passage to Sydney; they were English born but resident in Australia for many years. From them she learned a good deal about the country that was useful to her.

~ August 2nd. We docked today and I got a taxi and went to the Metropole. The Andersons say that anyone can get a job of any sort in this country and it certainly looks like it from the situations-vacant columns in the paper. They say that lots of English girls come out and work here, usually in pairs, flitting about from job to job and seeing the country. I believe that's the best line. Travelling by bus.

Sydney is rather like Seattle, a bustling sort of place with bits of sea all round. Tomorrow I shall have to find out about buses, and probably leave here on Monday. I asked the Andersons where the Western District of Victoria was, and they said west of a place called Ballarat. I got a map today and found Ballarat. It looks as if it would be best to get to it through Melbourne.

She had a talk with the chambermaid in the Metropole Hotel and learned of the acute staff shortage experienced by all hotels in Australia, and of the considerable wages that were paid. She left Sydney by bus early in the morning a few days later and reached Albury on the borders of New South Wales about the middle of the afternoon. She found Albury to be a prosperous country town, an attractive place with a number of hotels, good shops full of fine fabrics and Swiss watches, and a general feeling of well-being about it. She parked her suitcases in the office of the bus company and strolled out down the street to look for a job. Within half an hour she was a waitress in Sweeney's Hume Hotel at a wage of twelve pounds a week, sharing a room with a Dutch girl who had been in the country for about three months. An hour and a half later she was serving dinner.

~ August 5th. When Mrs Sweeney asked me what my name was I said, Jessie Proctor. It went down all right, and it matches the initials on my case. I want to find out about Bill's people but if everything's all right I don't want to be bothered, and Alan probably told them about me so that they'll know the name. Everything's a bit more under control this way.

She stayed in Albury for a fortnight before giving up the job and going on. It was a good experience for her, for it enabled her to find her feet in the new country and to learn a little of its ways. The hours were not long but the work was strenuous; with Anna she was responsible for thirty-two bedrooms as well as serving all the meals and doing a good bit in the kitchen.

She went on by bus to Ballarat, staying one night on the

way in Melbourne but not working there. At Ballarat she repeated her experience in Albury; arriving about midday, by three o'clock in the afternoon she was a waitress in the Court House Hotel.

~ August 25th. It's bitterly cold and wet here. I always thought Australia was a hot country. They've got a Shell map of Victoria in the office and it shows Coombargana as a little spot on a sort of dotted line, near a place called Forfar. It doesn't look as if Coombargana is a very big place and Forfar isn't much to write home about. I looked up Forfar in a tourist guide and it's got one garage and two hotels, the Post Office Hotel and Ryan's Commercial. The Post Office Hotel is the best; it's got eight bedrooms but Ryan's Commercial doesn't seem to have any bedrooms at all.

~ I've been keeping my ears open to see if anyone said anything about Coombargana, but I haven't heard anything. I think I'll go on at the end of the week.

She left two of her three suitcases in the station luggage room at Ballarat and went out in the bus to Forfar.

~ August 30th. Well, here I am, and I've come all this way for nothing. Coombargana isn't a village, it's an estate. Apparently it's a terrific place, one of these enormous Western District stations. Fourteen thousand acres, a big house, and God knows how many sheep. The Duncans are one of the big families of the neighbourhood. They've got about twenty men working for them all in houses on the property. Mrs Collins always speaks of old Mr Duncan as The Colonel, I suppose that's Bill's father.

~ Well, there it is, and now I don't know what to do. That's what Bill meant when he said they had a sheep farm. I wonder if he was afraid of shooting a line?

~ I've got a job here, so I'll have to stay for a week anyway. I got off the bus and went into the Post Office Hotel and booked a bedroom and had lunch, and after lunch I asked Mrs Collins if she'd got a job for a week or two. I said I was working my way round Australia and

going on to Adelaide, and I showed her the letters I'd got from Albury and Ballarat, saying I was a good worker. She said it was the off season so she couldn't pay much, but she'd give me six pounds and my keep if I didn't mind helping out in the bar. I told her I'd never been a barmaid but I was quite willing, only I didn't know the work. So I went down to the bar and Mr Collins showed me how to draw the beer and told me how much it was, and I helped him when the evening rush started. Two men came in on horses about five o'clock, tough-looking types. They were from Coombargana, boundary riders, whatever they may be. They tied their horses up outside like in the movies and came in and had about six beers each, and then rode off up the lane opposite the hotel. I asked who they were, and Mr Collins told me. I asked what Coombargana was, and he told me all about it.

I've been such a fool. I ought to have known that there was nothing I could do for them.

THE DIARY goes on:

~ September 1st. I saw Bill's father today. I was sweeping out the bar directly after breakfast and he drove up in a car and got out and came in and asked where Mr Collins was. I said I'd fetch him; he was down the yard feeding his pigs. So I did, and when I got back to the bar Mr Collins introduced me and told the Colonel that I was English and working my way round Australia. He asked where my home was, and I said London. He said he wished more English people would do that.

~ He's Chairman of the Shire Council I think, and he was talking to Mr Collins about local matters, something about getting electricity to Forfar and financial guarantees. He's about seventy, I should say, and he doesn't look a bit well, very white. He's got a great look of Alan about him, much more than Bill. He drank one small whisky and water, but refused another.

~ Alan and Helen are both in England, and have been for some years. Mr Collins told me that, after the Colonel went away. He said that Alan was in Oxford, or had been, but he thought he was in London now. And then he said that Alan had had a crash, flying, towards the end of the war, and had lost both his feet. He came back here after the war and was at home here for a year or two, but they said the accident had changed him a great deal. He didn't make friends or get about much and he was drinking a good bit, and after a time he went back to England. That was several years ago.

~ The daughter, Helen, went to England soon after the war and married somebody there, and hasn't been back since. Mr Collins said that there had been a younger son, Bill, but he was killed in the war. Coombargana is six miles from here.

~ Mrs Duncan has arthritis and they don't often see her in the village now. The family would be sort of local squires or something in England, but it's not like that here. When Mr Collins came into the bar to meet the Colonel he said, 'Morning, Dick', as if he and the Colonel were old friends. The family seem to be very much respected in the district, though. Mrs Duncan used to run a Sunday school in Forfar up till about two years ago when she had to give it up because she couldn't get about so well.

~ I can't get used to the idea of Alan hobbling about on artificial feet and hitting it up. He was such a terrific person in the war, obviously so good at his job and yet so quiet about it all.

~ September 2nd. There were a couple of foreigners in for dinner, Lithuanians or something. After dinner they sat in the bar, the man drinking gin and water and the woman drinking beer. He was a weedy, poor-looking specimen and the woman the fat, broad-faced, Russian sort of type. When the bus for Ballarat stopped they went away on that, and Mrs Collins was in the bar and she said, 'Well, that's a good riddance'. I asked who they were, and she said they were the married couple from Coombargana. The Colonel sacked them because they were always on the grog. She said they can't keep any help in the house because it's such an isolated place. It's six miles from here, but the nearest picture theatre is at Skipton and that's about twenty miles. They've got an old cook who's been with them all her life but it's a big house and they need more than that, especially now they're getting old. The girls from the village used to work there before the war, but now they all want to be somewhere near the movies and they can get such good wages in the city. Nobody seems to stay at Coombargana longer than a month or two. It's not only Coombargana, all the other big properties are in the same boat. All the money in the world with wool up at its present price, but they've got to do their own housework just like everybody else.

~ September 3rd. Mr Fox, the postman, was in the bar this

evening. He came out from England as a boy about forty years ago, from Beverley, in Yorkshire. We got talking when he heard that I was English, and I told him I was working my way round seeing the country. He said I ought to come out with him on his round; he starts off with the mail at about ten o'clock each morning in an old car and goes to all the outlying properties, getting back here about three or four in the afternoon. He takes the newspapers, too. He suggested I should go with him tomorrow if it was a nice fine day. It seemed too good a chance to miss, so I went and asked Mrs Collins if I could go if I got up early and did out the bar and the dining-room before breakfast. She said I could, so I've set my alarm clock for five-thirty.

~ September 4th. I've taken a job at Coombargana, as a parlourmaid. I did it on the spur of the moment without really thinking. I rather wish I hadn't now, but it's done and I go there next Friday. It's only for a week or two till they can get another married couple.

~ I went out with Mr Fox and we called at every house on the way, of course. It's a lovely countryside, rather like Salisbury Plain but on a much larger scale and with fewer houses and villages. All the houses wooden and rather new looking, except the very big properties which are quite different.

~ We got to Coombargana about half past eleven. It's just like a big English country house with a long drive, stone pillars and iron gates permanently open on the road and an avenue of flowering trees and pines about half a mile long through the paddocks. The house stands by a river in a very beautiful place, though the house itself is as ugly as sin. It's a big rambling two-storied house built of brick I think, rather like a Scotch castle gone wrong. The grounds all round it are lovely and very well kept, acres of daffodils in bloom, and japonica, and camellias in the sheltered places, enormous great bushes of them beside the clipped yew hedges.