The Noon Lady of Towitta (9 page)

It turned out she was right in sending for a doctor as I was diagnosed with the early stages of consumption, the same disease that had afflicted my sister Pauline for two years before her death. I don't know why Pauline and I suffered, no one else in the family had it. Although Madam advised me to return to my parents as soon as possible, I was kept on until a new servant could be found. The doctor advised that the new health nurse from the City Council would visit me and speak with Madam. She told Madam that although I was not infectious she would leave a list of health instructions that we had to follow. I could see Madam was unhappy about the nurse's opinion. The nurse convinced me that I should return immediately to the country, to the fresh air and all the benefits that rural life would give me. Madam and I were unsure as to what to do for the best.

I knew I had to leave but I dreaded returning to Towitta. I was in a dilemma. Madam felt I should return to my parents but she didn't want to lose me as I would be hard to replace. I thought of finding another situation with the reference she'd provided, intended for when I was well again. I thought I would have no difficulty in securing another situation. Madam told me that but for the tuberculosis, I could have had a job with her for as long as I liked. In the meantime I thought of other possibilities as I carried on with my job.

If Madam told her husband of my condition it didn't change his ways; his visits continued for a few more weeks. They only stopped when Dora, the nurse for the new baby, was taken on. It meant that she had to move in and share the room with me for the baby now slept in the former boxroom. It was a blessed relief in many ways but secretly I missed those nightly visits. Perhaps it explained why I became moody and difficult at times. I squabbled with Dora and the stablehands and snapped at Mrs Waters.

Only a few weeks later, when I was still trying to find another situation without upsetting Madam, Father wrote to Mr Waters telling him I was needed urgently at home. My sister Pauline, who had suffered from tuberculosis for some time, had taken a turn for the worse and was given only a matter of weeks to live. I was in a panic. I could not imagine life at home without her. My older sister was the only loving person in our family. And now I had been diagnosed with the disease too. What would happen to me? Would I also die?

Madam had not found a servant to replace me by the time I left the household. I felt guilty at leaving her with so much work to do in the house. She decided to look after the baby herself, while the baby's nurse agreed to do my work for a short time for an increase in her wages. Madam was very kind to me but there was some relief in leaving that situation because I was worried to death about becoming pregnant – although I can't say I was pleased at leaving Adelaide and giving up the independence I had gained. It was painful leaving that household, leaving a mistress who was kind and considerate. Far worse though, was leaving her husband, George, who taught me how less frightening the nights could be, even enjoyable when there was someone special to share them with. It was with much reluctance that I returned to Towitta.

Sister Kathleen was shaking her head with disbelief, not only about my amorous time with Mr Waters.

‘How dreadful that you had to return. I know you had no option with your sister being ill, but I think I would have gone mad at the thought, or drowned myself in the Torrens Lake.'

‘If I hadn't gone back, believe me my father would have come to fetch me. Had I found somewhere to hide for a time, he would have called in the police to find me. There was no escape. Father could have had me incarcerated into a lunatic asylum for my own protection. I took liberties, but where has it got me? For our sins, the evil eye gets us all in the end.'

10

Mother and my sisters were glad to have me home. But going home made no difference to brothers Willy and August. They were very poor company anyway, except for each other. They went about their chores quietly enough, minding the sheep and mending the fences for Father. Every few days they'd go off into the bush, into the distant hills or up the Cowlands or Towitta creeks and shoot galahs, rabbits, and the occasional kangaroo or emu. These hunts never included Bertha or me of course. We never wanted to go anyway. Bertha relied on Mother and me when she couldn't play with the Matschoss girls.

Some people called my younger brothers backward. But they weren't, they were just a bit slower, different to other boys. When people saw Willy's stooped frame, his pigeon chest and scissor-type legs for the first time it made them feel uncomfortable. Mother thought this misshaped body was associated with the fits he had from time to time that usually followed bouts of breathlessness. She called it his nerves because he became distressed when there was unpleasantness brought about by Father. Little children were known to scream with fright when they saw Willy for he looked like he'd jumped out of the pages of a Wendish folktale. August's slow and quiet manner fooled most, but he was not dumb. People just treated him like Willy because they were always together.

The boys never laughed, sang or even talked much that anyone noticed. They avoided contact with others and were deathly quiet, but they understood each other perfectly well with the sign language that included the merest of body movements and eye contact. They would slink away unnoticed in the same way they sometimes appeared, almost from nowhere. Once Father's chores were done, they vanished into the bush until mealtimes or bedtime. They had their own guns and when they had a supply of bullets they shot anything on sight that would make a stew or decorate their hats or clothes.

In the springtime, when the sun's gentle warmth could turn to blazing heat, snakes slithered into shady spots around the house and it became a haven for the several varieties. My sisters and I were scared of these creatures for they were often more than five feet long with venomous bites that could kill. If none of the men were around to blast them with a shotgun, one of us girls dashed for a gun and shot them ourselves. Those not shot often slithered inside and simply disappeared, only to be found coiled up in a pile of laundry hours later. More frightening was when we found one in the bedroom.

August and Willy loved nothing better than being brave and protecting us by blasting them to pieces. ‘Show me where it is and stand back,' August would say after retrieving the shotgun from Father's gun cupboard. The walls of the house were decorated by bullet holes until the yearly whitewashing when they were filled in again.

Willy and August were not at all like their older brothers who were normal in every way. Noisy and mischievous, Frederick and Heinrich battled with Father every day, unlike the younger brothers who were deathly quiet and terrified of Father. They got their revenge on the world by frightening Bertha with their gory attention to cutting up the creatures they killed and chasing after her with bloodied limbs or entrails, laughing and hooting with the sheer delight of seeing her running away from them in terror. These were the only times I saw them truly happy. This love of killing wild creatures and hanging up entrails had convinced the locals that there was something disturbingly odd about them. They were convinced that these habits would surely lead August and Willy to killing people. When anyone visited the farmhouse the brothers would vanish.

Although the boys went to the one-roomed school in the only street of Towitta and learnt English, we spoke to them in a combination of Wendish and German. Perhaps in doing so we weren't helping them very much to make their way in the world of English speakers. They spoke English with a thick guttural accent and non-Germans found it difficult to understand them at all.

11

I remembered how numbing it was to have to return to Father's household, losing my freedom even though I had just had my twenty-second birthday. It meant giving up a regular wage with food and board and most of Sunday free. Now Mother could care for Pauline while I did more of the farm chores. Back at the farm in the wilderness I despaired at how much I missed the hustle and bustle of Adelaide. I wondered if I would go mad. Father imposed his restrictions as before, making life cramped and unbearable. I was treated like my sister Bertha. I was humiliated by the lack of regard given for my age or the independence I had enjoyed in Adelaide.

‘You're not in Adelaide now,' Father shouted. ‘I'll have no daughter of mine bringing her fancy city ideas here and shaming me in front of our neighbours. While you're under my roof you'll do as I say. Is that clear?' And I lost my temper frequently in return, which did no good as I was punished with a leather strap or locked up. One night I was whipped after taking food to the barn to Willy and August, denied supper for being late home from hunting. Then as if this wasn't enough, I was locked in the smaller timber barn that creaked and groaned like witches even when there was hardly a breath of wind. So I learned to remain quiet and demure, while inside I raged and my thoughts were as black as a moonless night.

On my return home I witnessed Pauline's grave condition. Pauline was close to Mother, her imminent death made Mother weepy and prone to collapsing with grief. It was when Mother's sorrow made her unable to keep up with the chores that Mathes wrote to Mrs Waters requesting my return. I arrived home six weeks before Christmas, a frantic time for Wendish and German women. Although Bertha undertook the daily chores of feeding the animals and sweeping out the house, Mother wanted me to do the extra baking, the general cooking and the preparations that came with the season.

We prepared slabs of German cake known as
Streuselküchen
ideal for large gatherings of relatives at Christmas time. We baked honey cakes called
Honigküchen
which we cut into shapes and hung on the Christmas tree, in our case a small native pine. Christmas was usually one of the more happy events of the year when even Father was known to sing a rousing carol. This year, any merriment there could have been, was marred by Pauline's perilous condition.

Doctor Pullen made several visits and told Mother that Pauline was already too ill to make the journey to the Consumptive Home in Adelaide. ‘I'm afraid there's nothing more I can do for her. It could be any day now. Just keep her as comfortable as possible. She may die in her sleep, the best outcome for all, but I fear she'll have an attack before that happens. It will be painful watching her struggle for breath. I hope her demise will be quick and peaceful. This will not make for a merry Christmas, all your festive preparations will be for a funeral instead.'

When I returned from Adelaide, Bertha was moved back into Mother's room to sleep on a stretcher bed. I slept in the iron bed with Pauline. Each night as I held her I wondered if it would be her last. She often cried in my arms saying how different things would have been if Mr Khan had been alive and how fleeing from Towitta would have changed her life for the better. I usually sobbed in agreement, seeing now what my own plight was likely to be. I didn't stop her saying all these things for I knew it was fantasy. ‘Mary, I'm not crying because I'm dying. I'm more than glad to leave this cruel and sinful world. I cry for what might have been with Mr Khan and me. When you're feeling strong enough go as far away as possible. Heed my words, no good will come of you staying in this godforsaken place.'

Of course what she said was true. I didn't want to end up like her, unmarried and infected with the same disease. ‘I can't bear to lose you but I will not die like you, please don't say that I will. I feel well, just a little weary. No more talk of dying now. Who will I share my secrets with after you've gone? Bertha's not like us, and she's too young to understand the kind of things you and I talk about.'

The nights leading to Pauline's death became unsettled with her increased coughing. Each night before I joined her in bed, I put a bowl of water and some clean rags on the chest of drawers in preparation. She'd fall asleep without fuss but then wake in the night having a fit which seemed to be brought on when she stopped breathing. It was agonising listening to her desperate attempts to gain air. The rasping, wheezing and choking sounds kept us awake and I had to clean her up. I was allowed a lamp during this time and I would climb out of bed and light it when Pauline had these distressing turns. I wiped her face and handed her a rag to cough into. As she heaved and spluttered fighting for air, the bed linen became soiled and it became a daily ritual for me to boil out the stains in the copper. This only set of linen dried quickly in the hot, dry summer air.

None of the family in the house slept well during Pauline's last days. On her final night Father and Mother were woken by the desperate sounds of her struggling for breath, and they came to our room with Bertha. They suspected death was close. Mother and I sat either side of Pauline murmuring words of comfort and wiping her as the sweat poured off her. Bertha cried and Father merely sat at the back of the room with the lamp and his Bible and read aloud passages and psalms in the form of last rites. His reading from the Bible did not provide comfort for me.

The struggle ended when Pauline had a violent coughing fit which left her too weak to breathe. She looked more peaceful than I had seen her since my return home. Father and Bertha returned to bed. Mother and I quickly set to and laid her out, pausing to cry in each other's arms. This was the only time I could remember being truly comforted by Mother. Mother didn't feel it was proper for me to climb back into bed with a dead sister, as much as I longed to hold her. I was such a nervy person that I would rarely venture outdoors at night, not even to one of the barns. But that night I had no choice and went and found a place in the barn. August and Willy didn't stir when I joined them for the night.

Nothing disturbed the boys once they had gone to sleep, not even a storm or the dog barking. So it was my lot to wake them early in the morning and tell them Pauline had died in the night. I had never seen the brothers cry and when I told them about Pauline's death they did not seem to understand at first. They looked at me stunned. Then August said to Willy, ‘Like the birds, Willy, when they have gone to sleep.'