Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (32 page)

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne.

‘She sends my son Russ to this train every day,’ said the shopping lady. ‘I always gets a lift home with him. My house’s on the way. You’ll be all right with Miss Isobel, dear.’

‘Good,’ said Phryne.

`We didn’t quite know what to think when she started changing the old Harrison place,’ continued the shopping lady, introducing herself as Mrs. Albert. ‘But they’re growing real good fruit there now.’

‘Apples?’

‘Apples and pears, of course, but peaches, apricots, nectarines, cherries. My old man said you couldn’t grow them fruits in this climate; too hot and dry. Went on and on about it and bet my son Russ a tin of pineapple to a week’s milking that it couldn’t be done. He didn’t enjoy all that milking, I can tell you.’ Her satisfaction in her old man’s error was palpable.

‘But you can?’ asked Phryne, as required.

‘Miss Isobel’s done it,’ said Mrs. Albert. ‘My Russ takes the fruit to the Queen Vic market. Top prices, too. My old man planted a hundred apricot trees this year. Ah, here’s Melton. Not long now, dear.’

‘I’m a bit faint,’ said Mary. She turned a chalk-white face to Phryne.

‘Hold up, dear,’ said Mrs. Albert. ‘Soon be out of the train and into the nice fresh air. I’ll tell my Russ to get you a drink of mineral water. It’s very good. Nice and cold, out of the ground.’

‘Like Hepburn Springs?’ asked Phryne, feeling the pregnant woman slump against her shoulder.

A change of landscape outside, more trees and fewer rocks, and then at last the train clanked into Bacchus Marsh and the crowd parted to allow Mrs. Albert, Phryne and Mary out of the compartment and onto hard tarmac.

Few houses, lots of trees, pasture. Very idyllic, thought Phryne irritably, lowering Mary onto an unyielding railway seat.

A stringy, cheerful young man bounced through the gate and said, ‘H’lo, Mum!’ to Mrs. Albert.

‘Drop of water for the lady,’ said his mother, and Russ went to a tap and drew a tin cup full of cold water. Mary gulped half and gave the cup to Phryne, an action comparable to that of Sir Philip Sidney. Phryne appreciated it and sipped. It tasted like earth, was faintly fizzy, and would be very nice with lemon cordial and gin, she thought. Mary breathed deeply of the unpolluted air and seemed to recover.

‘Right-o,’ announced Russ. ‘Off we go, ladies. Got everythin’, Mum? Into the old trap then.’

‘Where are we going?’ asked Phryne.

‘Old Harrison place for you,’ said Mrs. Albert.

‘Got a new name now,’ said Russ. ‘It’s called the
Groves of Bilitis
. Sounds sort of foreign. Like Midnight of the Sheik. But that’s what the boss says we have to call it.’

‘It’s the old Harrison place as far as I’m concerned,’ sniffed Mrs. Albert.

‘Well that’s what I gotta call it,’ said Russ. ‘They even renamed the old mare. Called her Rosa. She answers to it, but. Carm on, Mum, they’re nice ladies and it’s a good job and there ain’t a lot of work around here, what with veggie prices so low.’

‘I’m sure they’re good women,’ agreed Mrs. Albert peaceably.

Rosa, thought Phryne as the mare walked faster. Rosa Luxemburg, of course.

Mrs. Albert descended from the trap outside a farmhouse with all her belongings and told Mary, ‘You cheer up, girl, my boy Russ’ll look after you.’

Russ grinned. Rosa picked up her pace. A mile or so on and a mile further back, and she got to put up her hooves and rest.

They paced through dusty bushes lining groves of fruit trees, some tall, some newly planted. Sheep grazed between the rows. Then they passed a gate with Groves of Bilitis emblazoned on it. It was open, so Russ left it open. And there was the farm.

It was a very big old farmhouse, surrounded by sheds overgrown with passionfruit vines. Down the verandah steps came two women. Four dogs of indeterminate breed raced out, barking loudly to impress on any visitor that unpleasant people would be eaten. Russ said, ‘Get outta it, ya mongrels,’ and they fell back, abashed and wagging. Phryne clutched her unravelling raffia bag and inspected the duo approaching through the guardians.

‘Alexandra,’ said the short plump woman in men’s clothes.

Phryne thought for a moment. Then she dead-heated Mary in replying, ‘Kollontai.’ Sign and countersign, indeed. Communists. They were almost as secretive as the freemasons.

‘Names?’ asked the short plump one.

‘Mary and Phryne,’ said Phryne, wondering how long this was going to go on.

‘Well, now we’ve got that over with, Sophie, let’s get them inside for a cuppa. They look ready to drop.’

A tall, commmanding woman with the sort of grave beauty seen in statues of Athena took Mary’s arm. Phryne followed.

Russ said, ‘See ya termorrer!’ and went back to the trap, unloading several boxes which had come on the train and then endeavouring to extract Rosa from a multitude of small children. They were feeding her apples and hanging around her patient neck. Rosa snuffled and crunched. She declined to move while there were apples on offer.

The principal scent of the kitchen was vinegar. It was strong enough to sting the eyes. Seven women were working at the final stage, which was packing the scalded onions into their jars and pouring the boiling pickling liquid over them. Hundreds of ranked jars of various concoctions (piccalilli, apricot, plum, cashmere chutney, sweet mustard) and bottles of tomato sauce gave evidence of their industry.

‘Sorry, pickling day,’ explained the tall grave lady. ‘I’m Isobel, by the way. This is Sophie. Come and sit on the verandah. The smell will dissipate soon. They built these houses to cross-ventilate. Wendy, are you on teas today? Can you make some for us, please?’

This, though expressed as a request, was more of a divine command, and the tea appeared swiftly. It was good, strong and bracing. Mary drank two cups and ate a slab of shearer’s cake, a dense fruit cake made in a baking dish.

‘Now, what can we do for you, Comrade?’ asked Isobel to Mary.

‘I just want to be safe,’ said Mary. ‘To have my baby in peace. Then I’ll have to find a job. But they were going to take it away. No one’s going to take it away.’ She clutched her belly fiercely.

‘No, no one is going to take it away,’ said Sophie. ‘You’re safe here. You need to work for the good of us all while you can. We will look after you and then we’ll find you a place, somewhere you can keep the baby with you.’

‘I’ll work,’ said Mary fervently.

‘Good. But you don’t have to start today. I’ll take you to Algie. She can show you to the bathroom and get you a comfy nightie. Then you can rest.’

Mary sobbed, mopped, and was taken away. Isobel Berners leaned back in her chair, lit a cigarette, and said casually to Phryne, ‘Well, what brings you to visit us, Miss Fisher?’

Chapter Fourteen

We have nothing to lose by fighting but everything to gain. We want the right to live decently, to have comforts and pleasures and to give our children nourishment and care. The master class have always encouraged the inactivity of women. We must fight! There is nothing that men can do which we cannot do.

The Woman Worker, 7 January 1929

‘Rats,’ commented Phryne. ‘And I thought I was doing well.’

‘Oh, you are,’ said Isobel. ‘Very convincing. Stance and all. Took Sophie in. Would fool anyone except that I’ve seen you before. At the Socialist Women’s Conference last year.’

‘Indeed,’ said Phryne, taking out a gasper and allowing Isobel to light it. ‘You were very convincing about how a commune could never work once it got beyond a certain size. And that the Russian experience was thwarted by centralised govenment.’

‘I am honoured that you remember my speech so well,’ said Isobel.

‘You were very memorable. And yet…’ Phryne waved a hand at the surroundings. ‘Here you are in the middle of what is definitely a commune.’

‘Life is strange, sometimes,’ reflected Isobel. ‘When I was a nice doctor’s daughter in Kent, I thought that my life would be very predictable. School, home duties, marriage. My brothers went to university to become doctors but that was never thought of for me. And my sister was indulged with clothes and so on, because she was pretty and taking and likely to marry well. But I was too tall, too definite, and far too prone to speaking my mind, so it was decided that I would be the one to stay home and look after my aged parents. A spinster until I died, full of good works and regretted by few.’

‘Erk,’ said Phryne. ‘So, what happened to that nice little plan?’

‘The Great War,’ said Isobel.

‘Ah, yes,’ said Phryne. ‘That changed my life, too.’

‘What did you do?’ asked Isobel.

‘I ran away from school and became an ambulance driver,’ said Phryne, swallowing tea and tasting horror and mud.

‘I became a Land Girl,’ said Isobel. ‘You have to cast your mind back to the way that people thought then. I didn’t know I was strong. I always thought men were the strong ones. I didn’t know I was intelligent or competent. Only men knew how to run things. And I believed it all!’

‘Quite,’ said Phryne.

‘They sent me to Lord Hamilton’s estate, from which all the men had gone. I was there with a staff of girls and one very old man to teach us what to do. We had to plough, sow, cultivate, reap, stack, run tractors and look after horses and cows and carry manure. My parents were horrified and tried to get me exempted, but I gave them a speech (which still makes me blush) about patriotic duty and the motherland. This land work was my only chance to see anything else of the world.’

‘So you went?’

‘I went,’ said Isobel. ‘And for the first six weeks I was so hungry and cold and my body was one big ache and I swore that I’d run away, but somehow I never did, and it got easier. I found out I was strong. I could lift a cast ewe back onto her feet. I could swing a churn onto a truck. And I began to get the hang of the agricultural year. I made charts and diagrams. I kept the accounts. I managed to circulate my tasks so I tried everything—milking, butter churning, cheese making, clotted cream. Riding and the care of horses. Driving a truck. Slaughtering, butchery and cooking. Pickling and preserving. It was a wonderful education. Not that the old lord appreciated me or anything silly like that.’

‘Of course not,’ said Phryne. ‘You’re just a gel. And a stopgap gel at that.’

Isobel snorted. ‘The old beast insisted on his imported wine and his Cuban cigars,’ she said. ‘I could only just squeeze the money for petrol and sugar and other useful things out of his steward, as old and crabby as he was. By the end of the war I was as good an estate manager as anyone could want, and even though the young lord never came home—he was killed on the Somme, poor boy—I was instantly sacked and couldn’t find another job.’

‘Of course,’ said Phryne. ‘But you really couldn’t go home.’