Summer at Mount Hope (13 page)

Suddenly the air filled with shouting and yelling and a stream of angry men shot from behind the church waving sticks and sacks, trying to spook the wagon team. The driver held fast but the itinerants swarmed over the harvester, bashing at it with their sticks, tugging at its chains and tearing at its tin panels.

Centaur pigrooted, his hind hoofs slamming the sulky dashboard so the girls felt the sting of his metal shoes through the soles of their own boots. Lilith wrapped her calfskin fingers tightly around the reins and pulled back with all her might but the horse simply dropped his head and flattened his ears. The colour drained from Lilith's face. ‘Lord save me,' she said and closed her eyes. Phoeba gripped the armrest. ‘Hang on tight, Lilith, hang on.'

Centaur bucked and rose like a great hairy arc. As Lilith screamed, the horse bolted, jumping to breakneck speed and hurling the women back, their heads whipping so they bit their tongues and the smalls of their backs slapped the seat rest. Phoeba felt her innards press against her spine and they shot off down the dusty road at thirty miles an hour, the wind blasting against her cheeks. Centaur's hooves pounded gravel, the sulky creaked and the reins slapped.

Lilith's face was like a mask, wide and vacant with enormous eyes and a mouth frozen wide. Her arms were pulled straight by the tight reins.

‘Help me, Phoeba,' she screamed. ‘Make him stop.'

Phoeba reached out with one hand. ‘Give me the reins and grab the brake,' she said, but it was no good. Lilith let go of both the reins and grabbed the dashboard lace work. It went through Phoeba's mind that now was a good time to push her sister out, but she herd herself say instead, ‘Just hang on, Lilith. Be brave.'

There was nothing else they could do.

The horse galloped around the thistles at the intersection, thundering towards Overton. Its ears were flat to its head, its teeth bared, and the harness worked hard against its shoulders, leather slapping and metal ringing. The sulky's iron-wrapped wheels, shaky and thin, razored through the air at Phoeba's elbow and when she glanced down at the roadside it was passing in a blur, faster than she'd ever seen. The wind roared and stung, slapping her with salty spots of sweaty foam from Centaur's mouth and chest. The horse panted, its bellowing lungs heaving, and still its hooves pounded onto the hard dirt. Phoeba's hat flew off. The sulky swayed, lurched, broad-sided from one soft side of the road to the other, and jumped and thudded over potholes, bouncing the Crupps high and then slamming them back onto the thin seat. The road will soon rise to meet us and grate our flesh from our bones, thought Phoeba.

It was lunchtime at the shearing shed. Hadley was in the cook's hut finishing his pudding when he noticed the wind drop, just like that, as if someone had closed a window. Outside, the clouds drifted silently overhead in a shiny sky. The shearers lounged in the shade of the yards, smoking, the discontent of the morning temporarily at bay. Some lay flat on the greasy floorboards, their black tea cooling in tin cups beside them.

‘Rogue horse boltin',' cried a rouseabout sitting on a gatepost. He pointed across the paddocks and all eyes turned to the horse hurtling down the drive towards the homestead gates and the sulky springing along behind it and tossing its passengers.

Men uncurled and stood slowly. Someone called, ‘It's two women!'

Hadley saw the sulky and raced outside. He dashed through the door and his heart gave a great lurch. ‘Phoeba!'

Mrs Overton was pressing damp sachets of dock plant to her translucent skin when the horse and sulky clattered through the bluestone gates. She went cold as she saw the terrified girls, the reins dancing in the air beside Centaur's foaming flanks and the spindly sulky veering off towards the sheds. The two women bounced sideways.

‘Marius,' she screamed.

Away to the west, Rudolph Steel was herding a flock of sheep, shorn to their pink skin. The faint sound of a screaming horse and men yelping came to him over the plain. He swung his horse around, speared the mare's ribs and sprang into a gallop across the paddock, scattering the sheep.

The girl in the vegetable garden threw down her basket and ran after the sulky. The kitchen maid abandoned the butter churn to follow and even the milking cow turned to watch as the shearers made a wall across the track to the stables. But Centaur bore down on them, sending them scrambling up trees, onto the tank-stand and over the fence into the sheep pens.

The horse tore on, making a beeline for the stable gate, his old home. Phoeba saw the narrow gateway coming. Beside her, Lilith lurched back and fainted.

And then Hadley was there, standing straight in front of the galloping horse, his arms wide, his teeth gritted and a look of calm determination in his eyes. Phoeba knew Hadley would save her. But then he disappeared, a marionette tugged off-stage by his strings – Mr Titterton had pulled him away. She felt Centaur cut too soon through the gate and knew, now, she was about to be smashed against the hard ground. She saw her father smiling in her mind's eye and Henrietta, dear Henrietta, dancing like a boy. She said, ‘I love you,' and let go of the armrest, raising her arms and closing her eyes.

The wheel caught the gatepost and the judder was tremendous, a sickening jolt that pulled Centaur up hard at last and skewed him on his hind legs. He screamed like a birthing beast. The sulky wheeled, its wooden spokes splintered and the wheels fractured and flew away in pieces, as the sulky collapsed sideways and the metal axle knifed in the hard dirt. Phoeba flew out onto the hard ground and the air rushed from her. She was still, stopped, at last. A wave of pain took her to blackness.

The men watched the girls tumble out. They called ‘Whoaup' to Centaur, who heaved, pawing at the dirt, terrified. Behind him the cart lay like kindling, the tea, fruit, flour and butter splattered around the limp women in the settling dust.

Phoeba was on her side in the dirt, Lilith on top of her, trying to sit up and patting at her dishevelled hair with one hand. Mr Rudolph Steel reined in his mare, kneeling down in the dust. ‘There now, it's over now, you're all right.' The wool presser lifted Lilith's hem as though he were handling a live snake and pulled it down to cover the bottom of her lace bloomers. Then Marius Overton appeared and took her outstretched hand, saying, ‘Where does it hurt? Can you breathe all right?'

‘Yes,' she said, her jaw chattering and her skin clammy. ‘Such a bother.'

Marius said tenderly, ‘You are very brave,' then scooped her in his arms and carried her to a gum tree where he settled her in the shade. He told the tarboy to stay with her.

Phoeba heard a great rushing in her ears, like the sea. Her arms, all the way to her elbows, were stinging, she was shaking, and great waves shuddered through her body. It felt as though icy winds were passing over her on a blistering day. The strength was all knocked from her. Around her, eager, desperate faces framed by white lace caps looked down – men hovered behind them. I will get out of this, she thought, and I will not die.

Steel appeared again and she tried to smile, but his face vanished behind a black curtain. Someone lifted her. She screamed in pain. It was her back, a white-hot poker in her spine. Then she couldn't feel it anymore.

‘My legs are missing,' she said.

‘They'll come back.' She opened her eyes and Rudolph Steel was grinning at her. Such a lovely smile, she thought, and he put a glass of something sharp-smelling to her lips. ‘It's a draught, to make you feel better.'

She was in a room, a lovely room, and a sweet, warm potion was sliding down her throat. Steel leaned back but she clung to his neck. He was nice and she wanted to hang onto him but he pulled her arms away somehow and was gone. Her belt was unclasped, her skirt left her, her arms were raised and the blouse left, taking her undershirt. Her boots were unsnapped and her stockings slid off. She wore no corset; would they be shocked?

Fingers rummaged through her hair searching for snapped-off hat pins or punctures and her jaw started chattering. Then they washed and dried her, swabbed and dressed her arms and hands where they had been scraped raw. They put her into garments that felt like spun cloud and she lay stunned, staring at the ceiling, a dull hum in her ears and soft, white linen around her head.

The cook pressed a poultice to Hadley's shoulder. He had landed on it roughly and wrenched something inside: he winced. Behind him, Mr Titterton said, ‘That'll see you right, Hadley, these chaps know what they're doing. The bruise will come out.'

‘I'll see the doctor if he comes.' He would ask him about Phoeba.

‘Of course, of course,' said Mr Titterton, and patted his shoulder making Hadley wince again.

The cook lifted Hadley's arm and he yelped, but the cook held firm; ‘You do ebery day, put up put up,' and levered Hadley's sore arm up and down. He wound torn sheet around Hadley's shoulders and under his arm to secure the poultice. ‘I change, tree days time. You come back I change.'

Hadley nodded and the cook helped him into his shirt.

‘It'll smell like a stagnant scour pond in three days,' said Hadley, trying to be brave. He had wanted to save Phoeba.

Mr Titterton helped him button his shirt. The cook made him a sling from old sheet before he shuffled away, his long plait swinging.

‘You'd better inform Mother, but don't alarm her,' said Hadley, thinking he should get back to the shed but wanting to go upstairs to see Phoeba.

‘I'll ride home this evening,' said Mr Titterton.

Home, thought Hadley. Mr Titterton called Elm Grove home already. Hadley screwed his face in pain, looked up at the kitchen ceiling, picturing Phoeba somewhere in the house, limp and grazed and bleeding. In pain. She is made of sturdy stuff, he told himself.

Robert whistled as he moved his lamp, pillow and pyjamas back to his room. The wind had stopped and his vines were still under the sunshine, quietly thickening, preparing to make their sugar and acid. In his shed he stacked empty barrels next to his small wine press and turned the handle to frighten the spiders. He swept out the bin and oiled the axle on the grape wagon. It was when he was making his way down to the vineyard, knowing it was far too soon for veraison – that magic change of colour that marked the grapes' ripening – but wanting to check anyway, that he saw Henrietta's short creamy hack cantering up the lane. He'd never seen Liberty canter before. It was a short-shouldered thing and Henrietta was jigging up and down enough to chip her teeth. The horse slowed of its own accord, its chest salty with sweat. Henrietta looked as if she'd seen a sea monster.

She handed Robert Phoeba's hat. The brim was torn, the net ripped.

‘I can't find them,' she said.

‘She's just lost her hat …' But Spot whinnied, his ears forward and still, watching a dray travel down the lane from Overton. The draught horses trotted briskly, Marius Overton bouncing behind on his brown and gold Arab. When they turned at the intersection, Marius struck out ahead, cantering up the slope towards Robert and Henrietta. The hair on Robert's forearms stood up and cold fear turned in the pit of Henrietta's stomach.

‘Where's Phoeba?'

‘At Overton,' said Marius, tying his horse to the veranda post, ‘Centaur bolted. I'm very sorry—'

‘Is she all right?'

‘Yes, Mr Crupp, I'll go for the doctor as soon as we've seen to Lilith.'

The wool presser steered the cart to the veranda and Henrietta and Robert moved to the back of the dray. There was Lilith, supine and ragged. She opened one eye, recognised the sky as her own and then looked at her father standing over her.

‘I thought you were a corpse, old thing,' he said and rubbed his chin with his hand to stop it quivering. ‘Your sister?'

‘How is she, how's Phoeba?' asked Henrietta.

‘She's well and truly tucked up now, nothing broken we think. She was on the bottom, with Miss on top of her,' said the wool presser. Maude came out of the house, thinking she had visitors, and saw her daughter in Marius's arms, dishevelled, her jacket ripped and her skirt dust-covered. She screamed.

‘An accident with the sulky, the horse bolted,' said Marius.

‘This is a wretched, brutal place,' moaned Maude collapsing into the wicker chair while he told her about the accident. Lilith buried her face in Marius's neck, Henrietta hovering behind them.

Robert looked up to the heavens. ‘Those ruddy temperance women have cursed us,' he said.

Fairfield railway station was quite a distance from Melbourne, at least thirty minutes, but Aunt Margaret found the entire trip from Bay View very pleasant; the flat, dun-coloured plains around Melbourne changed along the Yarra River to paddocks that lifted gently and sank, to thick bush and gum trees. When the train pulled into Fairfield, a tall man with a beard that reached his waist, wearing green boots and a red-checked suit, waited with a woman who was wearing a red sack dress. They watched, like characters from a light opera, as the carriage doors swung open and a carpetbag plopped onto the railway platform. A pair of paint-splattered boots stepped onto the small ladder and a thin older woman climbed down, backwards, clutching at the rails. Aunt Margaret stood next to her bag. A warm gusty breeze rustled the bush. All around her, bellbirds sang.

The man called, ‘Margaret Robinson?'

Aunt Margaret beamed at them. ‘Mr Spark?'

The couple smiled and clapped at her and Margaret felt a strange urge to bow.

The badly dressed man removed his boater and genuflected flamboyantly. ‘At your service, mademoiselle.'

Aunt Margaret's mouth fell open. At last, she thought, I've met a real artist.

‘May I introduce Miss Border,' he said.

Miss Border was Margaret's age but in better condition. She had a blossomy complexion and was immaculately groomed. ‘Well bred,' thought Margaret. She picked up Margaret's bag and Mr Spark offered her his arm, smiling at her as if she was brilliant, famous, beautiful. He led her towards the river, pointing the toes of his green suede shoes as he walked, like a ballerina. Under an ancient pine tree they paused and spoke. They talked about the depression, about electric tramways and about the sea monster – a giant serpent that had chased a whale off Newcastle. People said it was the same sea monster that lived in Loch Ness, although Mr Spark assured them that a loch and an ocean were very different milieus. Then they brought up the topic of art.