Unnatural Habits: A Phryne Fisher Mystery (Phryne Fisher Mysteries) (33 page)

‘No need, my parents had moved into a boarding house run by one of their nieces, thankfully. So they were settled. Then I met Sophie Harrison.’

‘That Sophie?’ asked Phryne, gesturing to the house which a Sophie had just entered.

‘Yes, she was looking for a place where she could be herself.’

‘Harrison as in “the old Harrison place”?’ asked Phryne.

‘You are very sharp,’ complimented Isobel. ‘She said she was establishing a women’s commune in her old family home, and she had the capital. So I sailed for Australia with her. No men, she said. Not even male animals. I managed to persuade her that we needed a rooster if we wanted more chickens and that drakes were very decorative, but that’s the extent of it. The cows have to go to bull somewhere else and even the dogs and cats are all female.’

A cat sleeping on the verandah table near Phryne raised her head, blinked, and went back to sleep.

‘That is…individual,’ said Phryne.

‘I’ve come across stranger ideas,’ shrugged Isobel. ‘When Sophie formed her commune she needed an estate manager, and I am she. Farms need an immediate authority. Much as it pains me to say, they really do need a boss. Large decisions go to the commune. Small day-to-day ones are mine.’

‘For example?’

‘The commune decides that they want to grow nectarines. I talk to some nectarine growers, find out the best type, locate and buy the saplings, and oversee the planting and nurture. And the picking and marketing. We have a stall at the Queen Vic Market and it is doing very well.’

‘I thought fruit prices were very low?’ said Phryne.

‘Oh, they are. But not only are we selling top-quality fruit, we are making things from it which command a higher price. For example—we have a glut of tomatoes at present. The vines are overloaded and some of the fruit has been pecked or spoiled. So we make tomato sauce, with our own onions and vinegar. We only have to buy spices and sugar from outside. We collect the bottles for free. Just have to wash them and scald them in the oven. One bottle of our tomato sauce costs a halfpenny to make, and we can sell it for threepence, which is still cheaper than the commercial brand. And much tastier, as well. We can sell all that we can make—pickles, preserves, jams. Cheeses. Come and let me show you around.’

‘And your labour?’

‘All the members work,’ said Isobel serenely. ‘And the women seeking refuge, too, if they can. Some of them are so starved and ground down that all they can do is rest until their baby is delivered. Mrs. Albert is our midwife.’

‘Thus the SS 5.10 BM?’

‘My aunt had a baby out of wedlock and they made her give it away. And she mourned it the rest of her life. She was always sad. She cried over that baby every night until she died. It’s not right. Until there is a reliable way of avoiding conception, women take all the blame and then have the fruit of their wombs stolen from them. Fair enough if they don’t want the child. But if they do, they can come through here.’

‘Through here? Not to stay?’ asked Phryne.

‘Well, no, there wouldn’t be room. We get them jobs or find them places.’

‘You don’t use Jobs for All, do you?’ asked Phryne.

‘Never heard of them,’ said Isobel briskly.

‘I’m so glad to hear that,’ said Phryne. ‘Shall I shed my disguise?’

‘No, no, the others are used to pregnant women wandering around. You don’t want to disconcert them.’

‘Tell me, did a reporter called Polly Kettle ever come here?’

‘No. She would not have been very welcome if she did. People think the oddest things about groups of women without men. I shall ask, of course. You are investigating her?’

‘She has vanished,’ said Phryne. ‘And you were just one place that she might have gone.’

‘You shall see the whole establishment,’ promised Isobel.

Walking like a goddess, Isobel exhibited the Groves of Bilitis with pardonable pride. Four Jersey cows grazed in their little after-milking paddock. Children had made wreaths for their necks, which they were quietly eating. The dairy was scrubbed sterile. Pans of milk sat quietly in the cool stone building, cream rising. Cheeses dripped through their cloths. In an adjoining shed, shelves held drying cheeses. The smell reminded Phryne sharply of Tuscany.

‘We make two sorts: a soft cheese for cooking and a hard cheese, which takes six months to mature. If the soft cheese doesn’t sell we can turn it into hard cheese. Have a taste,’ offered Isobel. The cheese was reminiscent of Parmigiano, grainy and salty.

‘These apricots are going to be jam tomorrow,’ said Isobel, indicating an overloaded row of trees. ‘Russ brought in the sugar. We make pectin out of lemon juice, from the trees over there. We tried oranges, but they did not do well. But lemons do well everywhere except on actual ice. We’ve got as much water as we want from the Werribee River. Now we’ve got pipes it’s a lot easier.’

‘How long have you been here?’ asked Phryne.

‘Since 1919. The first years were hard. Quarrelling and inappropriate crops. Several of the commune left. The rest worked very hard to nurture our soft fruits. Everyone said we couldn’t grow them here. But they flourished.’

‘So I heard,’ said Phryne.

Isobel chuckled. ‘I’ve never seen Mrs. Albert so pleased. Now that we’re making a living, we can employ people for the hard tasks—ploughing, fencing, picking, heavy lifting. We did it all ourselves in the beginning. We could do it all again,’ said Isobel Berners.

Phryne believed her. This was a woman in her right place at her right time, and nothing short of catastrophe could stop her.

Actually, Phryne’s money would have been on Isobel despite the worst that catastrophe could do.

She was shown the apple press for making cider. The racks of dried fruit dessicating in the sun. The rows and rows of fruit trees with their weed-control sheep grazing between. The olives from which the commune made oil. The spacious barn with a flock of chickens pecking through the litter. Two donkeys, a mare and a foal. Phryne caressed velvet ears and was nuzzled.

‘Fortunately, the baby donkey is a jenny,’ said Isobel.

‘Isobel,’ said Phryne, after an hour, ‘this place is amazing. Now show me the mistakes.’

‘If you wish,’ said Isobel, taking Phryne outside. She waved a hand at a stand of straggly green sticks. ‘Corn,’ she said. ‘We won’t sow it again. Something lacking, perhaps, in the soil. We can grow our own barley. One year we had a plague of fowl pest and lost most of the chickens. Yes, Maisie?’ she asked, as a small child dragged at her hand.

‘Isobel, the bees are swarming!’ shouted a little girl.

‘Get the little kids out of the orchards, and run for Mr. Bee. Quickly now,’ she added, and the child sped off.

‘Mr. Bee?’ asked Phryne.

‘Mr. Bairstowe, our local bee-man. Hence the Bee. The commune doesn’t like employing men but he’s the only bee-keeper around here. We are doing well with the honey. Our bees fertilise the fruit blossoms, so the honey is delicately flavoured. What were we talking about?’

‘Mistakes,’ said Phryne. ‘Failures.’

‘This year the foxes got a lot of ducks and the remainder haven’t been able to keep up with the slug population so the cabbages have holes. And a bold experiment in making apple brandy exploded and took the shed with it. Other than that, we are doing well.’

‘And the women?’

‘The labouring mothers are in the back of the house, where it’s quiet,’ said the stately woman. ‘Come and meet them, if you like.’

Phryne followed her through the cool house, past the scrubbed-clean kitchen where the seven picklers were putting up their feet and drinking cold cider, to a large room which had been made out of screening the back verandah with heavy mosquito netting. It contained a row of army cots made up with clean linen and blankets. Four of them were inhabited. One woman was breastfeeding a newborn, watched by a doting girl hardly into puberty, herself heavily burdened.

‘Hello, Ann,’ said Phryne. ‘Hello, Mary. I’ve been looking for you.’

Both faces froze in terror. Ann Prospect clutched her baby so tight that it screamed. Mary O’Hara paled and sat down suddenly. Phryne kicked herself for her brutal approach.

‘I’m so sorry, you have nothing to fear, I’ve just been looking for you to make sure that you were all right. Now that I can see you are, I can cross you off my list of missing girls and look for the others.’

The baby provided a useful pause by throwing up all over Ann. There was an interval while she was rinsed, dried and provided with a clean gown by a slender woman in blue overalls.

‘Who sent you?’ demanded Ann Prospect.

‘I sent myself,’ said Phryne, sitting down on one of the cots. ‘I am helping Detective Inspector Jack Robinson with his enquiries. Girls are vanishing. You among them. We need to have a talk. You’ve fallen on your feet, ladies. Others might not have been so fortunate.’

‘All right,’ said Ann. She burped the baby and laid it in the haybox cradle beside her bed. ‘Ask us anything you like.’

‘Tell me how you came to be sent to the convent. Who is the father of that fine baby?’ asked Phryne.

‘Bastard foreman at the works. Got me against a wall one day as I was going home from the night shift. Said no one would believe me because he was a respectable man with three children and I was a factory worker. Bastard! But he was right,’ she admitted. ‘I told my dad and he called me a whore, and off to the convent I went. You been there?’

‘Yes,’ said Phryne. ‘Though not in the laundry.’

‘No, they wouldn’t let anyone in there,’ snarled Ann Prospect.

‘But I will get in,’ said Phryne. ‘Because a reporter is missing and I have yet to find her. I’ve located you and Mary and Julie,’ she told the woman.

‘How’s Julie?’ asked Mary.

‘Fine—married, a mother and very happy,’ Phryne reported.

‘Beaut,’ said Ann. The baby mewled. She picked it up again.

‘Someone dropped in on that foreman and made him infertile,’ said Phryne, watching both faces closely. ‘Surgically. Someone dressed as a nun.’

‘Yer jokin’,’ said Ann, joggling the baby.

‘No, true dinks,’ said Phryne.

Both women grinned.

‘Couldn’t have happened to a nicer bloke,’ said Ann. ‘What about her Mr. Fraser?’

‘Him, too, and her dad.’

‘Gosh,’ said Mary O’Hara. ‘Who did it?’

‘There you have me,’ said Phryne. ‘Have you any idea who might want to revenge you?’

‘No, but if I could meet her I’d shake her by the hand,’ said Ann.