Summer at Mount Hope (16 page)

Then the door opened and there she was. Lilith. She was wearing Phoeba's new blouse and holding a book and a bouquet – some daisies and a single geranium. ‘At last, you're awake. You know if you hadn't made me nervous, Phoeba, I would have been able to stop that horse from bolting.'

‘Hello, Lilith.'

‘Mother's taken to her bed. She says she has fractured nerves and a headache. Under no circumstances are we to mention Aunt Margaret and her commune to anyone here at Overton. You didn't say anything while you were delirious, did you?'

‘Have you seen Henrietta?' asked Phoeba, her voice croaky and unused.

‘She comes every day to ask how you are,' said Lilith, shoving the vase of wilting flowers aside and sticking the fresh ones in Phoeba's glass of water. ‘More flowers from Hadley. There's a note.'

‘Dearest Phoeba, you are made of good stuff, you will be all right. May I visit?'

‘Was he hurt badly?' Hadley can visit any time he likes, she thought.

‘He's got a sore shoulder. Have you seen yourself? That nasty gash over your good eye will scar.'

‘You're all right, then?'

‘I had extensive bruising and very sore shoulders from pulling on the reins and, worst of all, a badly turned ankle. I couldn't walk. I had the doctor look at me all over, told him about my scarlet fever.'

Lilith plonked down on the bed and a pain shot through Phoeba. ‘It was influenza, Lilith. Is anyone remembering to look after Spot?'

Lilith dumped
Far From the Madding Crowd
on the bedside table.

‘Marius had Centaur shot but he's teaching me to drive a brougham! I drove here! He said when he saw us tumble he thought of his wife.'

Lilith said Marius as if she'd been saying it for years.

‘We have the cook's horse now. Her name is Angela,' said Lilith running her hands along the damask counterpane. It had small flocks of sulphur-crested cockatoos embroidered on it.

‘Why can't they give us a decent horse?'

‘And I can't wait to drive the brougham to church.' Lilith wandered over to the window. ‘Marius says I make him feel alive.'

That was it, she thought suddenly. Hadley was honest and honourable but he didn't make her feel alive. Did she make him feel alive, she wondered, or just secure?

‘They have running water and gaslights in the garden.'

‘Lilith, can you bring my clothes—'

‘No! You have to stay here. The doctor said your spine had moved, or something, and you must rest.'

‘I'd rather be at home.'

‘You are to stay until you're completely well,' cried Lilith.

‘All right, I will,' said Phoeba calmly, ‘if you bring me all Dad's books on grape growing.'

‘I'll get Marius to bring them,' said Lilith. ‘Have you seen Mrs Overton? She's so sophisticated.'

‘You could learn a lot from her,' said Phoeba, falling back onto her pillow. Her body was very sore.

‘I intend to,' said Lilith.

Thursday, January 18, 1894

T
ime and again the wool-rollers went to McInness's table with fleeces rolled against their chests. Hadley watched, disappointed and miserable, drumming his fingers on the classing table. He might have a bad arm but that didn't mean he couldn't gauge a fleece.

There was another two weeks shearing left and there were mostly rams to come. They were valuable animals, delicate and cumbersome. There was no shortage of willing men to shear but only the most experienced could be trusted not to ruin the priceless studs with a badly handled set of shears. Hadley knew the shearers would ask for even more money for this delicate task. And they had every right to ask. But would the work stop again or would Overton agree?

After the last bell, he headed upstream from the shearers' camp, crunching his way through the dry bark on the creek bank. The air smelled of wet clay and dusty eucalypts and occasionally, sickness – lot of the shearers were ill. First there was an outbreak of measles, and this last outbreak was from bad game, they said. He fancied he heard men moaning, although it was hard to tell as birds whipped and chirped and some shearers – the thin but healthy ones – sat peacefully on the ground, naked, or soaped themselves, waist-deep in the tan water. He dumped his towel and clean clothes and leaned on a stringy-bark to remove his boots and socks. Placing his spectacles on top of his clothes he stepped quietly into the water, feeling his toes in the slime on the creek bed and his thin, white limbs sinking. He slipped under the water to the murky silence.

He was towelling himself dry, wearing only his glasses, when Rudolph Steel popped up in the water in front of him.

‘Good God, Steel!' He quickly covered himself with his towel.

‘You like water, Hadley?' asked Rudolph scraping his dark wet hair from his forehead.

‘I've nothing against it.' It occurred to him that he and Phoeba might go swimming at the bay again, if they were married. He'd shield her from the swaggies.

‘We'd like you to take on the wool-wash,' said Rudolph. ‘We're grateful for your negotiations with the shearers, and your guarding of the shed, and the scour would keep you on after the shearing's done.'

Hadley thought frankly that the scour was beneath him: he preferred the shed, the men working quietly, dignified among great baskets of tumbling wool. But the money from scouring wool would do very nicely.

‘I'll think about it,' he said, reaching for his singlet.

‘Let me know by the end of the day. There's £100 in it for you – however you divide that for men and equipment. Guston thinks you'll be good with the Chinamen.' The new Hadley – the Hadley who negotiated and protected – knew he could be good with any kind of man, Chinaman or not. He called after Rudolph, ‘Can I ask … I'd like to return here next year, if I could.'

‘And we will have you back, if we can, but there are sheep all over the eastern states. You can go anywhere with a letter from Overton.'

Walking back, he tallied up the cost of two pressers, pot stickers, soakers, first and second scourers, green hands and barrowmen. He reckoned he'd need £125 at the very least to scour the rest of the wool, pay the men and make a wage. He'd insist on £130.

Hadley appeared at Phoeba's door clutching the books and waving a handful of roses with his good hand. Petals fluttered onto the carpet. Quite pretty, thought Phoeba.

‘Hadley. Come in.' She struggled up a bit and forced herself not to cry. It was lovely to see him, dear Hadley.

He came in slowly and rested his hand on the porcelain bed knob so that petals fell on the bed.

‘Well,' he said, ‘look at you!' His eyes were brimming with tears.

‘I am very happy to see you, Hadley.' He was far better than Lilith. Hadley remained silent, grinning at her. ‘I'm on the mend,' she said, and patted the bed next to her. Hadley dragged the pretty pink dressing table chair up to the bed and perched on it. Finally, he gave her the flowers and she sniffed them, so sweet and fresh, while he took
Great Expectations
and two poetry books from behind his sling and thrust them at her.

‘I saw you trying to stop the horse. You could have been trampled.'

He shrugged and his painful shoulder made him wince. ‘Titterton pulled me away, but I'd gladly have been trampled for you—'

‘Don't say that, Hadley, I don't know if I'd do the same for you.'

‘I know you'd do it for your children,' he shot back.

He took her hand and she wondered if another proposal was coming, but instead he opened one of his books and read her a poem.

‘ “I loved her for that she was beautiful,

And that to me she seemed to be all nature,

And all varieties of things in one;

Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise …”'

He closed the book carefully. ‘You know, Phoeba, I'd do anything for you.'

‘Please don't write me any poetry.'

He sighed and Phoeba told herself to take him seriously.

‘Did you think I was going to die?'

‘Yes.' He'd thought he was going to die too, facing those shearers, and guarding that shed. Phoeba didn't know how brave he'd been.

‘I thought so too, Hadley. And you know, you paid me the furthest compliment, asking me to marry you, but—'

‘But you promised—'

‘I promised I'd think about it, and I have. I've decided to live life to the full, and as I want. I'm going to stay on the farm and grow grapes.'

‘But you must want to do all the things life is about.'

‘What is life about, Hadley?'

‘Well, you do the right thing, you belong to a community, you have children …' He picked up the copy of
Great Expectations
and turned it over in his hands.

‘Had,' said Phoeba, tenderly, ‘I don't have to do what everyone expects to have a full life. Life is about being how you want to be, doing what you want and being happy. I want to be free and I can't be free if I'm responsible for someone else's happiness. It's perfect the way it is. Out in the world I'd have to wear a corset to be a girl and do as I was expected.'

‘You've had a bump,' said Hadley glumly, rubbing at his forehead. ‘You should see a phrenologist.'

She looked him straight in the eye, those soft, blue eyes in his soft oval face – sincere and hopeful, and loyal. She didn't want to pity him, and she didn't want him to beg. She moved her gaze to the knot of his tie. ‘Hadley, you need to marry someone who enriches you, who'll give you a full life. I don't love you like I'm supposed to—'

‘Romantic love, Phoeba, humbug. It's only in books.'

‘Books are true, Hadley, embellished a little, perhaps, by authors, but they are true. And you and I want very different lives. So I'd give up all my instincts and you'd give up all that is natural to you. You'd have to make do with hope and it would ruin you. I want to work on the farm so I can live and contribute, achieve. I don't want to compromise. And I think I deserve better.'

‘We all think we deserve better,' he said. ‘I'd give you friendship, and independence. I would make you happy. We would build something fine together.' He followed a twist in the turned brass column of the bedside lamp with his long finger. It was a beautiful banquet lamp with an engraved glass shade. ‘And who will look after you and your awful horse when you're old?'

‘I just don't want to look back and say, “Gosh, I compromised all the way,”' said Phoeba adamantly. ‘Now, read me something else; I feel like a bit of satire.'

He put the poetry aside, crossed his arms and looked at the cockatoos on the bedspread. But she egged him on and drew him out of his sulk and he agreed to read her
Great Expectations
, until she yawned. When he was sure she was asleep he pressed the sheet around her chin and crept out, feeling his way through the great, silent house by soft gaslight.

Thursday, January 25, 1894

D
r Mueller, a short and yellowish man, arrived on the next Thursday to check on Phoeba. He tied the wall-eyed, skewbald hack that grudgingly towed his coffin carrier to the garden arch and left him to sniff the wisteria. Tottering into Phoeba's room unannounced, he found her swinging her legs over the side of the bed. ‘Stop!' she cried. ‘I'm better, truly I am.'

A vial of iron and quinine citrate dropped from between the shredded seams of the doctor's leather case where a scalpel protruded. His jacket was burnished with stains and three flies hovered over his head. Sitting on the edge of Phoeba's bed, he blew his nose into a stiff, crinkly handkerchief, then poked it into his top pocket – he'd been battling a cold since anyone could remember – and dragged a stethoscope from his trouser pocket. The small circles of cold from its metal cone pierced Phoeba's nightdress, and she shivered.

‘Ah,' said Dr Mueller, wrapping his similarly cold, flat hands around her ribs, ‘fever. Influenza?'

‘No,' said Phoeba.

‘What day is it?'

‘Sunday?' She had no idea.

‘Hmmm.' He looked worried. ‘Your sister was up and about so quickly because she was wearing a corset. It kept her spine and internal organs in place.'

And because she landed on me, thought Phoeba. ‘When can I go home?' she asked.

The doctor looked at her, puzzled. ‘You are at home, Miss Overton.'

‘My name is Phoeba Crupp.'

The doctor patted her hand. ‘I'm sure it is.' He shook his head and walked forlornly to the door. ‘Please God,' she said, though she still didn't believe in Him, ‘may I not have caught hydatids.'

Later, sitting in the wicker chair at the small table by the window reading
Rules for Vignerons on Grape Cultivation and Harvest
, she heard noises come in waves. Horses coming and going, the grind and jangle of carts, maids struggling up and down the back steps. Someone played the piano and she listened, her head resting on the back of the chair and her eyes closed. Such a beautiful sound – she felt sad that she and Lilith hadn't learned. If they'd stayed in Geelong they would have. Instead, she thought, she had Spot – and the vineyard.

Henrietta burst through the door.

‘Do you know who I am?' she said.

‘You gave me a spider once called Betty and you can hit a tin can with a slingshot from fifty yards away.'

Henrietta flung her arms around Phoeba and pressed her cheek to her head, ‘Dr Mueller said you didn't know what day it was.'

‘Dr Mueller knows less than his horse.' She tried to move but Henrietta held her fast. ‘Henri, you're squeezing me.'

‘Sorry.' Henrietta dragged the dainty chair from the dressing table and cupped Phoeba's hand in hers. ‘Did you think you were going to die, Phoeba?'

‘Yes, but the worst part was lying here waiting. I couldn't even roll over.' She felt tears welling.