Summer at Mount Hope (2 page)

The vicar opened his hymn book and so did the congregation and the church filled with the thistly sound of flicking hymnal pages. From the first note of ‘Father, who on man dost shower Gifts of plenty from thy dower', it was clear the new vicar couldn't sing, but he sang anyway, and enthusiastically, his voice rising and his fat throat quivering. Finally, he snapped his hymnbook closed and cried like a small boy suggesting a game, ‘Let us pray for relief in this time of scarcity.'

The vicar gave a passionate lecture that rose to whistle pitch: ‘Increase the fruits of the earth by thy heavenly benediction. We must pray for a good season: drought, famine and hard times are caused by improvidence, drinking and gambling – all of which are at the root of evil. Cast thy burden upon the Lord and he shall provide.'

The farmers shifted on their knees and Freckle nudged Phoeba: ‘A bit of a letdown if rabbits is the best He can provide.'

Phoeba smiled. She didn't believe dry weather was caused by squandering money, and she knew the banks were to blame for the depression.

Turning then to the altar cup the vicar let out a mighty squeak: a sparrow was perched on its lip, splashing and preening in the wine. The bird flew back to the trusses, the swaggies charged down the aisle and the vicar had to refill the cup three times.

At the end of the service the vicar clasped his hands at his chest and, with his neck bunched above his clerical collar, said, ‘I know you're looking forward to lunch as much as I would be if I had a nice roast and pudding to go to, but in the interests of the Lord, nature and the elements, I ask you to dig deep and offer donations to finish this roof. We are all in depressed circumstances but £50 would see the ceiling lined and the birds cast out.' Then he rubbed his hands together and rolled down the aisle towards the door. The Overtons followed hot on his heels, with Lilith nudging her way through the small dense crowd behind them. Phoeba fell in behind her mother to hide her wet bottom. At the door, Maude introduced herself to the vicar, already flanked by the Temperance ladies.

‘Mrs Crupp has a vineyard,' said the largest Temperance woman. ‘It's for alcohol.' She had low buns either side of her head which, combined with a mole on her nose, made her look like a koala.

‘A vineyard?'The vicar's eyebrows shot up. ‘I must come for lunch.'

‘We'd be honoured,' said Maude. ‘And this is Phoeba, my elder daughter.'

The vicar took Phoeba's hand in his with a grip like warm, raw chicken.

‘The vicar will have roast rabbit with us today,' boomed the koala-like Temperance woman.

Phoeba extracted her hand: ‘We grow Sweetwater and a few Glory of Australia grapes. For white wine.'

‘Lovely,' said the vicar. ‘I do get tired of red.'

Phoeba propelled her mother towards Widow Pearson and Hadley as they waited in the shade between the vehicles. Henrietta arrived.

‘Happy New Year for tomorrow,' said Phoeba, squeezing her hand.

‘Hadley has an interview at Overton this afternoon.'

‘For wool classing?'

‘Yes. But it's a secret.'

As the Overton carriage passed, the older women stood to attention. Mrs Overton hid behind her parasol, and Marius tipped his hat without actually looking at anyone. Mr Titterton captured the Widow's gaze and lifted his hat high, his lips stretched back from his wooden gums. Mrs Pearson giggled, then gasped, like an expiring canary, the rest of the group holding its breath until hers was restored. She suffered respiratory problems.

‘You'd think the Overtons would donate an organ for Christmas, wouldn't you?' said Maude. ‘The hymns are such a struggle.'

‘At the moment everything's a struggle for all of us,' said Had-ley, glancing across to the swaggies wandering to the foreshore.

‘Of course, Mrs Crupp, I've always had to struggle,' wheezed his mother.

‘So you keep telling us,' said Maude.

Maude and Widow Pearson endured the wary acquaintance of neighbours whose children had grown up together and who shared common experiences – middle age and the treacheries of rural life – but who actively despised each other. Maude's bulk could no longer be shaped by a mere corset, but Widow Pearson drew her small torso very tight in the middle, squeezing herself into the shape of a sand timer. As a result she wheezed like a burning gas lamp and the tip of her nose was blue. The three false ringlets she pinned above her ears and the small mourning bonnet she shoved on top made her look like a spaniel with a bunch of grapes on its head. She'd worn the same bonnet, the same black dress and the same large, elaborate bustle every day of the nine years since her beloved husband died. Hadley resembled his mother – fine and thin – but Henrietta was big boned, like her late father.

Widow Pearson pointed to the muddy watermark at Spot's flanks: ‘I see you have been dragged through the mud again.'

‘I thanked Marius Overton for saving us,' gushed Lilith.

‘We were saved by Mr Titterton,' said Phoeba, impatiently. Her jacket itched and her feet were swelling in her boots. She just wanted to go home.

‘My poor friend Mr Titterton,' said Widow Pearson. ‘I don't know why you don't get a decent horse and for that matter, a suitable carriage. At least get lamp sockets.'

‘Anything larger would be extravagant for the three of us,' said Maude, glancing at the Pearsons' sumptuous six-seater. The truth was that Robert said they couldn't afford a four-seater, even a wagonette. So that was that.

‘It's good to see Marius out and about,' said Lilith, eagerly. ‘He's obviously getting over his loss.'

Phoeba was about to ask why going to church indicated recovery from grief when Widow Pearson interrupted – ‘They say he came back to Overton for Christmas,' – and pulled her mourning veil over her face. ‘Anyway, Lilith, what would you know about losing a spouse?'

The vicar drove past in the wake of the Temperance women's buggy. ‘Do you think he's … eligible?' asked Maude, and Phoeba felt her gaze.

‘No,' she said.

Lilith and Henrietta, even Hadley, shook their heads.

‘He has a career, a future,' said Widow Pearson, smoothing her son's lapel. ‘But of course Hadley has a splendid future in wool ahead of him.'

Hadley bit his bottom lip and adjusted his spectacles.

‘Well,' said Lilith, ‘that won't be too splendid. All I ever read about is how the wool industry's about to collapse.'

Widow Pearson started panting and her sky-blue nose turned immediately purple. ‘The world needs wool, Lilith Crupp,' she wheezed. ‘What on earth else is there to wear?'And she lifted her skirts, put her foot on the step, held her elbows out and waited for Hadley and Henrietta to hoist her into the Hampden.

‘Will you be in this afternoon?' asked Hadley, as Phoeba took her position behind her mother, found the rim of her corset through the folds of her satin skirts and pushed her into the sulky.

‘No,' said Phoeba, panting. ‘We're going to Melbourne.'

Hadley frowned, puzzled.

‘It was a joke,' said Phoeba.

‘Of course it was,' he said, and put his hat on. ‘I'll drop in.'

Phoeba watched as he steered the old Hampden out of the yard. She always maintained she didn't believe in God, that she only came to church because she had to drive. But she said to herself, ‘Please God, let Hadley get the job.' It would be his first job since finishing school and Overton must need a classer. It would lift Hadley, his mother and sister from a fading existence to comfort.

At the intersection Hadley waved and turned south to Elm Grove while Spot kept on towards Mount Hope. Home to the Crupps was a neat weatherboard nestled at the base of an outcrop which was actually just a gathering of boulders on top of a big, bushy ridge – a full stop to some distant, ancient ranges. The house had four rooms and a kitchen tacked onto the back, a lawn of stringy buffalo grass and some desperate petunias at the base of the front step.

‘I don't know how the Widow can go out in public still wearing a bustle,' said Lilith. ‘They went out of fashion in 1883!'

‘Oh, I know!' said Phoeba with mock outrage, ‘especially with the fashion around Bay View always of such a high standard!'

‘Her friendship with Mr Titterton is unbecoming,' said Maude. ‘She's only friends with him because he's stock overseer at Overton.'

‘He looks after the sheep when Hadley's away,' said Phoeba.

‘I'm sure that's not all he's looking after,' muttered her mother.

The competition between Maude and her neighbour had started shortly after the Crupps arrived at Bay View, when Mrs Pearson became a widow. At the wake, she had wailed, ‘I am left alone to raise two children.' And Maude, trying to be encouraging, had said, ‘We were very young when we were deprived of both parents, gone together, and my sister and I turned out splendidly.'

Convinced her new neighbour was practising oneupmanship, Mrs Pearson had been trying to outdo Maude ever since – skiting of plans for a grander house, purchasing a better horse and carriage, maintaining a thinner waist, all that despite her farm's and her family's struggles.

The only sign of Robert when the women got home was a note: ‘Gone to see about a new horse.' It was anchored to the kitchen table by an empty wine jug.

‘At last,' said Maude, pleased.

But then Lilith told her the back of her dress was wet, and she shrieked and ordered Spot immediately ‘retired'. Phoeba unharnessed him, rubbed his shoulders boisterously with an old sheet where the yoke had rubbed, and led him not to the stables but into the dam paddock. At the gate she put her arms around his thick, black neck and pressed her cheek to his dense stinking hide.

‘You won't have to drag us to church and back every Sunday and you won't have to wait in the stockyards at Flynn's while we shop in Geelong all day. But you and I will still go riding.'

She opened the gate. The resident rooster and the wild ducks stared as the new tenant walked straight past them into the dam and stood there, looking over to the sheltering peppercorn trees in the corner. He scanned the view then lowered his nose to the water and drank. Phoeba went to muck out his stable for the new horse.

At Elm Grove, Hadley unharnessed the creamy hack and saddled his tall brown mare before washing his face and hands to join his mother and sister at the kitchen table. Henrietta had made a tomato omelette and lemon flummery – Hadley's two favourite dishes. He said grace and Henrietta carefully slid a slice of omelette onto his plate and next to his bread: he didn't like the egg on the bread, it made it soggy.

The family ate in silence, but the second Hadley put his serviette down the women sprang to action. Henrietta checked his kitbag for his wool classing certificate and letter of recommendation from the Geelong Wool Classing School; his mother retied his necktie, slid it flat under his waistcoat and pinned a clean collar on his shirt.

‘That's it,' she said and sunk into her wing-backed chair to catch her breath.

Hadley stood straight with his hands at his sides. Henrietta bent down and dusted his new boots with her handkerchief.

‘Thank you, both,' he said. ‘When I have my first pay packet I'll buy you a present.'

‘A new dress and bonnet would do me the world of good,' his mother sighed, and they looked at Henrietta. A new dress and bonnet wouldn't do her any good at all. They would have to think of something else.

Henrietta's heart grew thick with pride and her eyes filled with jealous tears watching her little brother ride down the driveway, the shadows of the lush elms moving across his back as he went towards a new life. She was bound to Elm Grove, to a life tightening the strings on her frail, fierce mother's corsets, to endless days of tedious housework and, of course, to Hadley and his sheep. The weeks during lambing were always tense but she liked it when the hungry orphans rushed at her, bunting her skirt and bleating. She loved to feed them warm cow's milk and see them grow. And she was very handy in the pens, renowned for her knack of cornering the sprightly rascals then dragging them to Hadley for wigging and crutching. She knew Hadley would be lost without her when it came to docking and castrating too. He appreciated her bravery, how she held them unflinchingly while he performed bloody tasks.

‘I have a home where I am needed,' she reminded herself, unlike the swaggies tramping the lonely lanes. And things would improve. Hadley would get a job. He would sink a well deep enough to reach good water. He would fertilise the land, breed up the stud line and build the new house their mother boasted of. There might even be money to hire help and that would give her time to grow proper, prize-winning vegetables. At last they would be able to buy a cow, build a proper dairy and even fox-proof the old chook house. It would mean she would miss her rides to Overton for the hamper and her visits to Phoeba. But there would be time for friendship, not just hasty visits and brief conversations after church.

‘I have a good friend in the world,' she muttered.

‘Henrietta!'

‘I am indeed fortunate,' she said, turning to go to her mother.

As he rode down the driveway Hadley looked at his land. It was a ghostly landscape of grey, dead gums. The majestic trunks were bare and bleached, jutting from the ground like stalagmites with angular branches that had twisted to a slow starved death and now pointed accusingly at him. His father had ring-barked them to make way for his sheep and now, years later, Hadley was battling salt-bog pastures clogged with rotting trees and supporting his mother and sister with money scratched from sparse, stunted grain crops and a few bales of wool each year. Not even rabbits, which plagued every other farm, bothered to eat his meagre patches of grass. But he still dreamed his father's dream – a flock of prize stud merino ewes and rams. True, he had sold some of their dwindling stock to pay for his wool classing studies, but now he was about to embark on a career. He would plough his earnings back into Elm Grove and the stud flock, and when the drought was over, ‘white gold' – that fine merino wool – would make them rich. He would make something of himself, improve life for his mother and sister, and marry and have a family. He had prayed hard in church that morning, and was certain God would help him.