Summer at Mount Hope

Rosalie Ham was brought up in the Riverina and now lives in Brunswick. Her first novel was
The Dressmaker
.

Also from Duffy & Snellgrove
The Dressmaker

Published in 2005 by Duffy & Snellgrove
PO Box 177 Potts Point NSW 1335 Australia
[email protected]

Distributed by Macmillan

© Rosalie Ham 2005

Cover design by Alex Snellgrove
Typeset by Cooper Graphics
Printed by Griffin Press

visit our website:
www.duffyandsnellgrove.com.au

Thanks to Varuna Writers' Centre, Gail MacCallum, Michael Duffy, Ashley Hay; also Neville Ham, Terry and Ian.

Contents

Sunday, December 31, 1893

I
t was the last Sunday of the year, blazing hot, and Phoeba Crupp was squeezed next to her stout mother and slim sister on the narrow bench of the family sulky in the middle of a low dam. Their boots were on the dash, their skirts were bunched in their laps exposing the lacy trim on their bloomers, and slimy green water swirled just below their bottoms. Lilith snivelled while her mother, Maude, eyed the stagnant water. In front of them the black tendrils of Spot's tail floated like yabbie whiskers. His nose rested lightly on the water and he blinked flies from his eyes.

The day had started well. The trip down Mount Hope Lane had gone without incident until they got to the intersection, where Spot had stalled, looked sideways at the dam, lifted his tail and expelled a pile of warm manure. They sat, they waited, willing him to move off again, but he had lowered his head and leaned back.

‘No Spot,' Phoeba said firmly, but he creased his ears flat. She pulled the brake lever; he trudged off the lane and across the stock reserve, the locked sulky wheels leaving gashes in the tufty, punctured ground. And although she leaned back on the reins with all her might, the sulky slid down the low bank to the muddy edge and splashed into the thick water.

‘Lord save us!' Maude cried, while Lilith squealed and waves sloshed to the bank, sending the ducks flapping.

And now they waited, their wide hats tilted to the hot breeze. A crow cawed at them from the signpost on its island of thistles in the centre of the intersection. When travellers arrived here from Bay View – a settlement of just three structures hugging a salty slice of seaside mud that was fondly called ‘the beach' – they were directed south to Elm Grove, a mouldering property belonging to the Pearson family, or north via the pass to the vast plains of Overton Station. Most people – swaggies, shearers, travelling merchants and itinerants – knew to take the short cut through Crupp's place and so continued to the west towards the outcrop and Mount Hope, although some wag had added a few letters to the end of the sign and it read, ‘Mount Hopeless'.

‘I've been asking your father for decent transport for years,' said Maude, ‘and I have never understood the vengeful nature of this horse.'

‘Take no notice of them, Spot,' said Phoeba, rattling the reins softly over his black rump. She'd fallen in love with Spot the instant she first saw him, a skinny black yearling with huge feet and a head like a plough blade, loping up the lane behind her father. Phoeba was ten at the time; they had just moved to the country and Spot was the first animal her father purchased. Phoeba fed him, washed him in the dam, trimmed his mane and fringe, plaited his tail and polished his hooves. She snuck him apples and confided in him, and every day Spot transported her to and from school. He had graciously accommodated Lilith when she started school too; she'd clung to Phoeba's waist while her small feet bounced against his ticklish flanks. Phoeba still rode him everywhere, astride and bareback.

‘This is your fault, Phoeba,' said Lilith.

‘Of course it is,' she replied. ‘So is the recession and the drought.'

‘I'll get to church all red, wet and smelly, and we have a new vicar today.'

‘I haven't seen a rich, handsome vicar yet, Lilith.'

‘A vicar's wife is an admirable position to have in any community, Miss Pertinacious Phoeba,' said her mother, slapping at a fly with her hanky. The ostrich feathers above her shifted like kelp: Maude always pinned far too much plumage to her hat. ‘It's you father's fault,' she continued. ‘He should never have brought us here.' She recoiled as a small beetle swam past.

When Maude had stepped from the train onto the siding for the very first time fourteen years ago, she had looked up at her new home and the surrounding countryside and declared, ‘This is a wretched place.' Lilith had been a sickly, whining fouryear-old at the time but Phoeba, at ten, liked the outcrop and the bay immediately. She relished helping her father establish the vineyard, and on her first day at school she had made two best friends – Hadley and Henrietta Pearson. They would be at church now.

A breeze skimmed through the dry heads of acres and acres of ripe wheat, and a distant sheep bleated. The crops were thin because of three dry years, and the air smelled of hot sun, of dust and baking grain and manure. The Melbourne train was approaching the Bay View siding, a low square platform made from sleepers, and slowed down. The mailman leaned from the goods van but no mailbag waited, so he waved his flag and the train whistled like a wailing child and accelerated away, curling a plume of black smoke across the foreshore.

‘We're late,' said Lilith gathering her skirt higher.

‘Sit still,' said Maude. 'We'll sink and our bottoms will get wet.'

‘If we sink, mother, it will be because of your bottom,' said Phoeba.

Her mother opened her mouth but the approaching clatter of steel-rimmed wheels silenced her. Phoeba turned and saw a slim, four-wheel carriage coming along the lane. It was dark blue with a golden ‘O' painted on the petite door, and lacy golden steps. The driver, Mr Titterton, was perched on a blue velvet bench high above two shining, chestnut Hackneys, and behind him in the carriage sat two well-dressed passengers.

‘The britzka,' said Phoeba.

‘Not Mrs Overton!' moaned Lilith, sinking further under her hat brim.

Maude stole a quick look and gasped, ‘And Marius!'

No one had seen the Overton's son since the death of his wife seven months before.

Lilith buried her face in her gloves.

‘They may not notice us,' said Maude hopefully. Mrs Overton swung her parasol behind her to see who was sitting in the dam.

Robert Crupp was sitting peacefully on the front veranda at Mount Hope sipping a glass of last year's vintage and puffing on his pipe – two pastimes his wife disapproved of, especially on Sundays. He was admiring the green, leafy sweep of his neatly serried vines, his best crop to date. While the farmers around him struggled through the dry year Robert's grapes, sustained with dam water, thrived. It was the only vineyard in this sheep and wheat district, and no one believed he could make a living from grapes. But Robert knew he was poised to reap the benefits of many long, hard years.

He raised his Collector, a small .410 gauge double-barrel gun specifically designed for orchardists, and focused on a bird as it pecked at a bunch of his bursting grape flowers. Beyond, at the intersection, he saw the Overton carriage stopped at the dam.

‘Bloody heck,' he said. He reached for his looking glass and it was then he saw Spot, chest-deep in the dam, and his wife and daughters perched in the partially submerged sulky.

He drained his glass of wine, picked up his hat, and made his way to the stables.

Spot raised his head and water dripped from his muzzle as he pricked his ears towards the shiny chestnut Hackneys. The slim, blue britzka drew to a halt on the lane.

‘Good morning,' called Phoeba brightly, raising her whip to the people who stared at her from the elegant carriage.

Marius Overton stood up, his hands on his hips, pushing his coat-tails back to show a braided waistcoat and a gold fob chain.

‘Ladies,' he said.

Lilith dabbed at her cheeks with her handkerchief.

Mrs Overton, regal and lily-white under a city parasol, stared at them while the driver tied his reins firmly to the brake handle, removed his hat, placed it on the seat, and climbed down. As the stock overseer at Overton Station, and the owner of a top hat, Mr Titterton was very important. He had caused controversy recently by sacking most of the drovers, buying an enormously fat boar and ten sows, and threatening to switch from sheep to pigs, but the thing he was most famous for was his Crimean teeth – said to be taken by Russian women from corpses on the war fields and sold to enterprising dentists who glued them to wooden plates.

Removing his boots and socks and placing them neatly on the dam bank, Mr Titterton paused while Phoeba prodded Spot again. The horse didn't move, so he pinched the crease of his trousers and waded gingerly into the slimy mud.

‘I am sorry,' said Phoeba.

‘Not to worry, we all know old Spot,' said Mr Titterton sinking up to his thighs. He gasped as the water pressed his trousers against his legs. As he reached for the bridle, Spot snorted and lunged forward, dragging the sulky through the water like a small paddle boat. The clay bottom churned and turned the water to grey folds that slapped Mr Titterton's waist. At the top of the dam bank Spot paused, his passengers angled precariously and clinging to the dashboard. Streams of muddy water poured from his sodden mane and the waterlogged sulky. Spot braced himself to shake – Maude cried, ‘Lord save us' – and shivered, sprinkling the air with arcs of water, shuddering the harness and rattling the sulky beneath the women. Then he sighed and plodded slowly up to the road.

Saluting Mr Titterton with her whip, Phoeba called, ‘Thank you,' and left him dripping on the bank, slimy from the waist down. The women wrung their hems and loosened their wet bootlaces while Spot walked calmly on, a wet trail behind him.

The church was a small weatherboard building with a pitched roof supporting a wooden cross that leaned slightly to the left. Spot turned into the yard, passing a sparkling new Abbott buggy, its thin, black mare drooping in the hot sun outside the vestry door. The previous vicar had shattered his hip when he sneezed and fell from his horse outside Mrs Flynn's shop, and Bay View had endured a succession of stammering, blushing curates for months.

A moment later, the still slimy Mr Titterton stopped the britzka at the church door.

‘We needn't go in,' whispered Maude, humiliated.

‘We have to,' said Lilith, her eye on Marius Overton as he helped his mother from the carriage.

Spot drew up under the peppercorns at the end of the half dozen wagons and sulkies, next to the Pearsons' Hampden buggy, an old but superior upholstered six-seater with a removable top. Standing next to it was Hadley Pearson, a lanky young man with peachy cheeks and spectacles.

‘Good morning,' he said, taking the reins from Phoeba. He was growing a moustache: it looked like a pubescent centipede had arrived on his top lip. ‘Spot did his water trick again, did he?'

Phoeba ignored his offered hand and jumped to the ground, showing a flash of boot and stocking.

‘Wait for me, Phoeba,' Hadley called, but she was already heading for the church.

Inside, the ten or so locals sat hemmed in by swaggies like train passengers experiencing an unpleasant odour. Henrietta, between her mother and someone with a grimy neck and greasy hair against his frayed collar, waved a long arm at Phoeba.

‘See you later,' Phoeba mouthed, squashing in next to the mailboy, Freckle, and his mother, Mrs Flynn. Henrietta was not much like her brother; she was boisterous and cheerful, whereas Hadley was inclined to worry.

Outside, Hadley wrapped his arms around Maude's hard steel and whalebone middle while she searched with her foot through layers of petticoats for the sulky's small, wrought-iron step. The whole carriage groaned and tipped, but he managed to get her safely onto the carpet of dry peppercorn leaves. She seemed to be heavier every Sunday, he thought. Maude checked for insects caught in her dress's jabots and her hat feathers.

‘You look smart, Had,' said Lilith taking his arm.

‘It's my new suit,' Hadley explained. It was grey wool and he'd left the coat unbuttoned to show his father's watch chain. The shirt was new too, with a stiff, square-winged collar that grazed triangles of skin on either side of his Adam's Apple. The whole lot had cost over thirty-five shillings.

Hadley ushered them past the pile of swags – grubby blankets rolled in thick coils and blackened billies – that blocked the tiny vestibule.

‘Crowded today,' said Lilith.

‘They must have got wind there was a new vicar,' said Hadley. ‘The last one chased them away because they drank too much altar wine.'

Maude had found a place in front of Phoeba next to Mrs Jessop, a toothless woman with six children and a newborn, and Phoeba noticed the back of her mother's dress was wet. A stain of sodden chocolate-brown serge circled her billowy bottom like a huge target. It was fortunate, she thought, that most people had their eyes closed in prayer or on the vestry door.

Lilith marched straight up to the front pew and sat next to Marius Overton. The Overtons always occupied the front pew exclusively. But Lilith just turned to Marius and smiled, wrinkling her nose and squeezing her shoulders together. He nodded to her, moving closer to his mother. Lilith leaned over and spoke to them. More front than the Exhibition Building, thought Phoeba. Hadley squeezed into a row with workers from Overton, scanning the pews for the cockatiel feather that perched on top of Phoeba's straw hat.

Phoeba wasn't praying. She was counting the sparrow chicks nesting in the truss above. The ceiling wasn't lined, and as the sun warmed the iron roof it expanded, creating tiny blasts that startled the chicks to squeak and dart out through the bell tower. Last spring, during one of the previous vicar's sermons – ‘Now the Serpent was more subtil than any beast of the field which the Lord God had made. And he said unto the woman …' – the congregation had sat transfixed as a brown snake slithered across a beam and ate the eggs from the nest before coiling over itself and sliding out the window. But no one could be distracted from the vestry door today.

Finally, the new vicar backed out, short, and fat from his low ears down. Swinging around to face them, he raised his arms so his angel sleeves hung. He saw the aristocracy, the local dowager and her heir. He saw Farmer Jessop, a staircase of dishevelled children, and his feeble wife with a babe in arms. Next to her was Maude, round and jowly with a feather forest on her head. Then the three fierce matrons from the Temperance society, Mrs Pearson, thin with a blue nose, and Henrietta Pearson, large and ruddy. Further back, Hadley Pearson, a slim, well-groomed strawberry blond praying among weathered farm workers and sunken-eyed swaggies and shearers. And finally, the Crupp spinsters – one plain with a pert feather in a sensible straw hat, and, sitting in the front pew, the pretty one with porcelain skin and dark curls.