Summer at Mount Hope (8 page)

‘They're turning the electric streetlights on in Geelong,' said Henrietta, her voice cracking.

‘Doing the lamplighter out of a job!' screeched a thin, pregnant woman.

The crowd pressed in and Phoeba smelled rotted teeth and the rank saltiness of unwashed females.

The dull-eyed lad stepped closer, eyeballing Phoeba. He swung his clenched fists and Phoeba felt her guts sink. Then a woman shoved him aside and raised a warning finger. ‘We know about the reaper coming to do us out of a job.' She pointed at her pregnant stomach, ‘The bundles on us gleaners' backs is getting smaller.'

‘It's the dry weather,' said Phoeba, gently.

‘It's the machines!' the woman screamed, her teeth hanging like loose buttons. She drew her fist back as if to punch but Henrietta wrenched free of Phoeba and twirled, dancing on her toes, her fists winding and her chin tucked in. The men guffawed and hissed.

‘Henri, no!' cried Phoeba.

Suddenly a familiar voice came out of the darkness, ‘Girls don't know how to buy machines!' It was Freckle, looking down at them from a boulder. He'd been checking his traps and some fat, furry rabbits dangled lifelessly from each hand.

‘And you'll all get work picking our grapes,' called Phoeba, pulling Henrietta back by her skirt.

‘Grapes is no good to us,' said the woman, and the crowd pressed in again.

‘There's already dozens of swaggies camped at the Overton creek waiting to shear and to harvest,' said Freckle, jumping from the boulder to stand between the girls and their assailants. ‘The grapes are your only hope. Isn't that right, Miss Crupp?'

‘And it's better work,' said Phoeba, ‘no snakes and no machines.'

‘Electricity will come out here one day,' said Henrietta. ‘Everyone will have it in their houses and every swaggie will be employed to build the poles to carry the wires and they even say every house will have a telephone.'

‘She's right,' said Phoeba. ‘You'll get work building the lines.'

The ring-leader held up his hand and the group steadied.

‘Where's these lights?' he demanded.

Phoeba pointed south. ‘That way.'

‘We don't like machines,' said the ring-leader holding his finger under Phoeba's chin. She stared straight back into his eyes. There were small balls of green in the corners and his lashes were sparse. He was the unhealthiest man she'd ever seen and she could only wonder what parasites his intestines harboured.

‘We don't like machines either, that's why we haven't bought any,' she said, reasonably.

‘You're camped on their land,' said Freckle.

The ring-leader swung on him. ‘Putting a fence up doesn't make it theirs.'

‘You'll have to scamper if you hurt them,' said Freckle.

‘You don't hurt us and we won't hurt you,' said Phoeba.

‘Gawn git,' said the ring-leader, and the girls hurried away, hand in hand, stumbling down the slope into the fading dusk. At the spring they sat down, breathed steadily until their hearts stopped thumping.

‘I was afraid, Phoeba.'

‘So was I.'

‘You're not a squib though, are you?'

‘We were both very brave,' said Phoeba.

‘I don't know why people can't clean their teeth,' said Henrietta, and shuddered.

‘They won't hurt us. They're desperate, that's all.'

They studied the darkening brown and blue patchwork landscape but there was no shine from electric light. Henrietta snapped a twig in half, shoved it in and out between the gap in her front teeth. After a moment she said, ‘Speaking of teeth, I'm worried my mother will marry Mr Titterton. Yesterday they read poetry together.'

‘Company for each other,' said Phoeba. ‘We all need friends.' She glanced behind her but the bush was still and quiet.

‘I saw them kissing.'

Phoeba laughed. ‘I find that difficult to picture.'

‘She acts like she's in love.' Henrietta inspected the twig, holding it just at the end of her nose.

‘Then love must be blind, that's all I can say.'

Henrietta rubbed the twig up and down on a rock beside her, as if she was sharpening it. ‘What will happen to us if she marries old Tit?'

‘You'll have extra shirts to wash—'

‘I'm serious. What will happen to me and Hadley?'

‘You could always get married.'

‘No one will marry me. I've got a face like a puffed apple at a dance and anyway, Mother won't let me. She'd have to do her own washing and who would tie her corset? I'd worked out that she'd be dead by the time I was thirty and then I can just live on at the farm with Hadley.'

‘What if Hadley got married, Henri, then what would you do?'

‘I'd still stay there. It's my home too.'

Phoeba took Henrietta's hand, stopped her rubbing the stick up and down and made her friend look at her. ‘Hadley wants to marry me.'

‘Hadley's always wanted to marry you.'

‘I don't think I can marry him though.'

Henrietta looked at her, astounded. ‘He didn't ask you, did he? Gee whiz, Phoeba. That's perfect! We can all live at Elm Grove together. Mother and old Tit can retire to Geelong.' Then Henrietta's hopes faded, like the thread of black smoke from a candle flame. Phoeba was not happy. She let go of Phoeba's hand. So that's why Hadley had been working so hard these past days. Henrietta inspected the calluses on her palm.

‘You don't want to marry Hadley—'

‘It's not Hadley, Henri, it's … I just don't think I want to get married. It's dangerous.' They were both thinking of Agnes Overton, young and privileged, writhing to death in a rich man's snowy sheets sodden with her own blood and sweat.

‘Babies don't kill all mothers,' said Henrietta. ‘Mrs Jessop had seven.'

‘And no teeth left.' Phoeba pictured herself standing by Hadley with her lips folded in to hide the gaps where her teeth had been. Even more unsavoury was the though of procreation with Hadley, with anyone without love. He had given her measles once, that was intimate enough.

‘Bathsheba, in the novel I'm reading, has taken over her uncle's farm,' said Phoeba. ‘Lots of women work. It's not necessary to marry. Please don't let it come between us, Henri. You're my best friend … I'm sorry.'

But Henrietta looked away. Mr Titterton kissing her mother, and now this. It was all ruined, and they'd been so happy before.

‘My mother married for security,' said Phoeba, ‘and it's made her and Dad miserable. I think we're meant to live a happy life.'

‘You would have made Hadley and me very happy,' murmured Henrietta.

The conversation was only making things worse. ‘Anyway, I said I'd think about it.'

‘Do whatever makes you happy,' said Henrietta.

But Phoeba was happy as she was: it was other people who urged her to change, to marry, to do the right thing.

Henrietta pointed off towards Geelong. ‘Look.'

And there, for the first time, a very, very faint glow, like a bonfire that was thirty miles away, seeped into the sky to the south.

Friday, January 5, 1894

E
arly morning brought the thresher team to the district. As she milked the goat, Phoeba watched it move along the lane, floating through the golden mist that hovered over the crops. Six brown bullocks dragged a big round steam generator, its chimneystack and flywheel moving above the grain like two masts. Floating behind on a flat-bed wagon was a thresher machine pulled by a team of draughthorses. The fireman and tankerman, the bundlemen and stookers, all marched with their scythes over their shoulders. Behind them all came a lone boy on a draughthorse pulling a water cart. And last, the gleaners, their children gambolling beside them. They turned east and settled in the paddock next to the church. So much pomp and apparatus for such famished crops, thought Phoeba.

Summer was progressing as it should. Every year the same team came to Bay View and every year they harvested the church crop first – it was the smallest. Then, as the feed crops ripened, they moved around the small community – visiting Jessops', Pearsons', and Crupps', and then they decamped and moved everything to Overton for the last long stint. This heralded the harvest dance at Overton, usually held the first Saturday of the station's harvest.

After breakfast, Aunt Margaret took her paintbox and palette, her chair and her easel, and went out to sketch the new horse. Maude baked, tempering the stove fire with twigs and small logs, and when she pulled a perfect flat-topped, square brown cake from the oven the house filled with a warm fruity smell that made them all – apart from Phoeba – long for winter or a wedding. Lilith emerged for breakfast, then retreated to rest herself for the ploughing match. And Phoeba, the day to herself, spent it with Spot, in the vineyard, happy.

Saturday, January 6, 1894

O
n Saturday morning Phoeba roused everyone, including Aunt Margaret, early. Then she filled a jar with sweet black tea and packed a picnic basket – sandwiches, plums, apricots and, a great wedge of her mother's special cake. Aunt Margaret set about choosing one of her oils to display in the produce tent.

‘Careful,' called Maude, ‘huntsmen live behind them.'

Aunt Margaret selected a still life of a lace curtain billowing over a recently slain fowl and surrounded by an assortment of fresh vegetables and a pair of secateurs. Robert started his day tasting wine and Maude, over her porridge, said that it was too early to drink.

‘Nonsense,' said Margaret, holding out an empty teacup. ‘The upright classes drink at mass every morning.'

‘Fragrant,' said Phoeba sipping her father's selection. ‘Thick and mellow on the tongue.' One day, she thought, she would like to learn more about wine making, perhaps make her own and give it her own name. One day, when the recession was over.

‘I've packed some of the cake,' she said to her mother, but Maude had other things on her mind.

‘I hope this new horse isn't easily spooked,' she said. ‘They may have a cannon this year.'

Robert gulped his wine. ‘A cannon?'

‘To start the match.'

‘Mother, they've never had a cannon before.' Phoeba headed out the door with the picnic basket.

‘Phoeba, you sadly know nothing of fanfare and hoopla,' her mother called after her. ‘There's no telling what will be there. They had cannon for Prince Alfred when he visited in 1867 and one went off too soon and blew the gunner's hand off, very messy. And there were far too many cannon-volleys and kettledrums and trumpets.'

‘Well Maude,' said Robert sucking wine from his moustache, ‘there'll only be a bit of bunting and a brass band today.'

‘I love a band,' cried Maude her hand on her heart. ‘We so rarely see culture out here.'

They were about to set off when something terribly important occurred to Lilith. ‘I could wear Phoeba's blouse. She's not wearing it.'

Aunt Margaret objected immediately. ‘I saved for a year to buy that blouse,' she said, ‘for Phoeba.'

Maude patted Lilith's cheeks, assuring her she looked lovely in anything, but it was too much for her younger daughter. Her day was ruined, she declared, because her parasol didn't match her dress's polonaise. Lilith would not be happy until she had thrown her tantrum and everyone else was miserable, thought Phoeba, so they may as well get it over with. ‘Every one will notice how terrible you look,' Phoeba said, ‘so you'd better stay home. You'd have to travel in the back with the wine barrel anyway.'

‘That's your fault,' said Maude, lowering her hat net, raising her chin and tucking the net between her thick wattle and her bishop's collar. ‘Usually Hadley comes with the Hampden to take us.'

‘I'll stay home,' she volunteered. She could spend the entire day by herself with a book, see Henrietta at church on Sunday and find out then if Hadley still liked her.

‘You will drive,' said Robert firmly to Phoeba. ‘Lilith, you're the smallest so you will ride dicky.'

Lilith stamped her foot. ‘Phoeba can ride dicky for a change.'

‘She'll drive.'

‘I'll drive.'

‘You don't know how, Lilith,' cried Aunt Margaret.

Phoeba offered to ride Spot; Robert insisted she had to drive; Margaret insisted she'd stay at home if Lilith drove; Maude said she'd do no such thing and that it was Robert's doing that they had inferior transport. Lilith stomped to her room and slammed the door so hard that three of Aunt Margaret's landscapes fell off the wall.

Robert sighed.

Phoeba went calmly over to Spot and rubbed his poll, thick and greasy under her palm. His eyelids drooped and he pressed his nose into her skirt but she had no apples in her pocket.

There was always a scene, always. During their first winter at the local school, Lilith had been told to give her seat to Louisa Jessop, still frail from rheumatic fever, so that she could be closest to the wood fire. Lilith had bellowed all morning, so loudly that in the end Louisa had begged her to take her seat back. And here we are, thought Phoeba, still giving in.

Enough was enough. She marched back to the sulky, climbed into the driver's seat and yelled, ‘I'm going. Anyone coming?'

Aunt Margaret joined her. Maude struggled, torn between her baby daughter and the prospect of the brass band. Robert headed through the gate on Rocket, and Phoeba made to follow, which propelled Lilith screaming from the house. She stopped in the middle of the yard wailing and skipping, like a marionette, with her skirts bouncing and her hat ribbons flying. Maude hauled herself into the sulky and Aunt Margaret sighed and folded her skinny bones into the dicky seat. Lilith settled herself, quite contentedly, and poor Centaur strained to pull the weight of them all.

‘Please,' thought Phoeba, ‘please let her find a husband today.'