1915 (30 page)

The few hundred yards they tramped through revealed a place more like a small town than a farm. It boasted a crossroads, a butchery, a blacksmith's shop, several weatherboard houses set at angles to each other with their own fences and gardens, huts for shearers
and stockmen, and way down near the creek a blacks' camp identifiable by wisps of smoke rising from among the trees.

After the pigs the rain intensified, and Mr Gillen consulted his watch. “Morning tea time,” he announced. Since the peacocks he had not addressed a word to Frances nor even looked at her. Now he abandoned them to the care of a freckled yardboy who led the way back to the house while keeping his head down.

“He's an old brute,” Frances muttered as they sloshed along.

One of the wives appeared on her veranda ostensibly to wring out a mop, and a lean stockman riding past wheeled to ask their guide a question, then tipped his had pointedly at Frances. She was relieved to see Robert's horse tied to the garden gate. Pleased too that he was the only one to appear at morning tea, which they took in a room with plenty of windows, rugs on the floor, and deep chairs.

“How was mother at breakfast?” Robert asked. “She thinks of nothing but the war.”

“Was that her last night?”

“Oh, Frances,” cautioned Diana while breaking open a scone that puffed steam.

“We argued about the war.”

“Really? What about it?”

“Whether I should go.” He reached for Frances's hand and held it the way he always did, without a hint of undue pressure. “Should I?”

“No, please don't.”

“You don't know which way I argued,” Robert continued, “for or against. Come on, guess.”

“What about Rosa? Wouldn't it be mean to go off before she gets here?”

“You tell me when she's arriving,” shrugged Robert, buttering scones and passing them round on a thin plate. His reddened hands looked enlarged after a morning's work in the wet.

“When
is
she?”

But he only laughed and said, “Do you like the room?”

She nodded. It made her feel welcome. Although it was a male room with trophies like the other it had cushions and a pile of magazines. The silver and bronze cups were not prizes for gross animals but displayed small models of horses vigorously galloping while tiny men on their backs brandished silver mallets. The fire, held in an iron cradle, was made up ready.

“It's my room. Mine alone,” Robert boasted. “No-one comes in here unless I invite them.”

 

In the afternoon Frances rode with Robert down to the woolshed while Diana stayed in her room to write the long-postponed letter to Billy. The rain fell heavily, but without a breath of wind. Frances held Robert tight around the waist while the horse picked its way through the roaring, silvery gloom. She had dreamed of doing this, and tried to recapture something of her reverie while watching leaves and sticks, damp and black, glide underneath. When he lifted her down they kissed, their oilskins coupling with wet sliding sounds, and rain blurring her vision. But like all his kisses this one had none of the passion she hoped for. Instead Robert seemed lost in consideration of experiences that did not touch her. Now, almost for the last time, she stood in awe of this preoccupation.
Although as Diana said she took liberties with Robert it had never been at moments like this.

Inside he set to work pulling samples of wool from assorted bales. At first Frances sat on a dark and slippery rail, balancing herself by holding to a nail in an upright. When a cold current of air knifed through the slats he arranged a seat for her in a gap between curved warm bales, covered her legs with clean sacking, and then got on with his work.

After a while he began talking about South America. He sang in Spanish a familiar tuneless ditty that she applauded (he had sung it before). They talked about the war, and again Frances protested: was it necessary for
everyone
to go? Robert was curious about Billy and Walter. He was beginning to wonder if there was not something in war that he needed to discover for himself. This surprised Frances — it had never occurred to her that he might be envious. He had always seemed to have so much more to his makeup than Billy and Walter, as if he was richer in himself and more glorious, and had no need of the dubious prizes of battle.

At intervals Robert washed his hands in a soapy basin and dried each finger on a towel hanging from a wire hook. Then he wrote details in a notebook. Rain sounded continuously on the iron roof, and again Frances had the feeling that the place she was in was on the move, the woolshed and its outbuildings sailing the plains towards some vague and disappointing destination.

“Tell me the truth,” she suddenly asked. “When is Rosa coming?” She knew he had received fresh news, because at lunchtime when the man brought the mail Robert had retired with a fat envelope.

Until this very minute Frances had felt in Robert's company none of the discontent nor the impulsiveness that had characterized her feelings for Walter. It was as though Robert with a power that Walter lacked had reached across and put that discordant part of her life into tune. When they kissed, it was not a matter of seeking sensation but of accepting it. She had never stopped to think about him, his thoughts, his future — except that now, seeing him engrossed in examination of the crimp that was the heart of the Gillens' empire, she felt an urge to disrupt.

“I don't think you really love her.”

Robert looked up. “She's in England with her father.” His face under its pad of blond hair was bright with an idea. “By golly! I could join an English regiment.”

“How seriously do you take me?” Frances asked. And then she demanded of him in a voice that almost broke: “
How seriously?
”

“You're a delight,” he said, advancing and kissing her on the cheek, then tugging at one of the plaits she had twisted her hair into to save it from the rain. He had said that kind of thing before. It was the code of their friendship. Yet now when he turned aside Frances started to cry.

It wasn't fair. The world was determined to go about its business without regard to her. Half the males she knew had sailed off the edge of the map, and there was Robert with his back turned tidying the classing table, and he was about to go too. Didn't he realize that here among the towering bales under a drumming roof he could have lain down beside her and done whatever he wished? But not now — not from now on — because now a deeper power than the body's stirred and
demanded his notice. He would have to acknowledge her pride. He would have to acknowledge the uniqueness she had once chosen for herself and had this minute recovered in a spate of hastily dabbed tears on burning cheeks. What had she been thinking all these months? Into what backwater had her ulterior motives led?

After a final scrupulous wash Robert said: “Come and I'll show you the view from the tower.” They climbed a greasy ladder into the rafters, Robert going first, reaching down for her hand and hoisting her onto a landing of springy slats. The tower consisted of a rectangle of tin with louvred ventilation windows. Crouched on a platform beside a nest of ropes and pulleys they were able to peer outside.

The road was visible. It emerged from the drive, crossed the home paddocks, then dipped into a hollow near the creek. But it no longer re-emerged to wander up the bank on the opposite side. Instead a green-grey tongue of water protruded through the trees from the direction of the river. Then Frances saw a file of women and children making their way to high ground from the blacks' camp. Some held sheets of tin over their heads and others bark. A few carried bundles and were unprotected, giving them the appearance of large-thoraxed ants heading for higher ground after the destruction of their nest.

“They'll camp at the old shearers' quarters till this is over.”

“Where are the men?”

Robert shrugged. “Some are out looking for sheep. Who knows where the rest are? They'll turn up.”

With Frances sitting behind he rode down to the sheds and asked the women if they were right for flour
and tea. Frances tried not to look at them, for here she was, dry and privileged, while girls her own age existed on bare sufferance. Did the girl Billy had attacked in the back yard of her father's hotel belong to these “Westbury” blacks? A naked boy of seven or so ran out into the rain and then back to his mother who hugged him while he laughed and shivered.

 

It was raining worse than ever when Frances knocked on Diana's door, and on hearing no answer entered. She was asleep, sprawled with mouth open and fine hands protectively splayed on her belly. Frances stared out into the garden. Gutters overflowed in anguished sheets, leaves on the grass struggled to raise themselves against the strident pressure of the rain. The only breeze came from water shifting the air around as it fell. Then, turning to leave, Frances knocked a tin of pins off the dressing table where they had been weighing down several sheets of writing paper. After a glance at Diana, half-stooped as if to collect the scattered pins, she started reading at the top of the page. It was a letter to Billy:

“… punishment. The minister should talk to me first! I could persuade him in no time that you are a good person and I know you are religious. The churches do not understand the religion of a person who is not a churchgoer. I had resolved to say nothing once again about what has been uppermost in my mind these many months, but your ‘us in our house' etc. with its picture of a third person whose true existence you had no inkling of made me sing with joy. But write to me soon about your feelings because until then, I can't
help it! I will be atremble. We came to Forbes because of the baby and I am known as ‘Mrs Benedetto'. Though it shames me, I shall be known as such until I can proudly take your name. Nobody suspects and I am treated royally, but always nervous. Not even F's father knows. I should faint if
your
father appeared as he is known at the hotel.

“Do you see Walter? I feel so dreadfully sorry for him. F has behaved carelessly. I do hold this against her as a weakness. Harry Crowell a scandal in himself told me that in his opinion F was deceiving and selfish and knew her own mind better than she let on. Robert has his Rosa and I doubt if F is anything more than a child to him. I cry when I think of your troubles, deaths etc. and danger, and the torment added for Walter who sends F a torrent of letters that stay unanswered. Stupidest of all now that I have seen more of R he is not worth it. What am I doing writing like this in the house of my host! I must tell you —”

Frances turned the page to find a huge cross scrawled through the following paragraphs. The nib had dug into the paper and thrown an angry black spray:

“— everything. I am sure R despises me. He addressed too many remarks in my direction, making up for a wish not to speak to me at all. When he agreed to this visit I asked if he could take us in his car past your father's farm but when the time came he apologetically said he feared a change of weather. When events proved him right he was as smug as the cat that swallowed the canary. As we left town he pointed to the scrub and said, ‘It's country like this where Billy comes from, not worth the “candle”.' I said it could be desert, I didn't care. But from a ridge F showed me the blue range miles away and it looked
magical. Last year she would have laughed with Mr Gillen who is struck by her but she responds oddly. She flirted with him at breakfast but was hideously rude on our walk this morning when he offered her a peacock's feather. Her rebuff stung, it was as if she had slapped him and I had to pretend not to notice. I suppose it would be easy to blame her ‘nerves' but when they consist of everything she does it makes things difficult for her friends. As I am her only friend and fast losing patience I suppose I ought to feel sorry for her but I can't. In my heart now there is room for no-one but you.

“In R's favour he is talking of going to the war. The latest lists in the papers show the seriousness of things. I have found how important it is to
care
, I know you have too. If you knew how I set you above these people! How proud I would be to relate your exploits under your own name. We were late last night and had a ‘scratch' tea but even so were served by the maids one Irish the other Aboriginal who were got up specially. You can guess the scale of things. The floors are polished daily. We are given imported preserves, then there are the outbuildings like barracks. I am …”

Diana mumbled in her sleep and Frances scooped up the pins and escaped to the veranda, closing the doors clumsily with a bang. A sudden gust of wind bowled hoops of rain under the eaves and she got wet, letting go the doors which rattled as she sped away. What a fool Diana was! Hoisting her petty triumph with Billy over everyone. She had poured all her science and clear thinking down the drain, and settled for what? The tin shed.

At dinner that night Diana started to sniffle and had to leave the room for a handkerchief. She explained that her door had blown open during her sleep and she had woken soaked. Her letter to Billy was ruined, she would have to write again. By the time the men were taking their port (Fleming the manager had joined them) Diana was launched into an endless string of sneezes. Just as well — Fleming knew Western Victoria like the back of his hand but was blowed if he had ever come across any Benedettos.

In the middle of the night Frances woke with a start to hear someone trying her door. The handle rattled one way, then the other. She reached for the greenstone ashtray Robert had procured for her bedtime cigarette, and raised it ready. The rain still pelted down and it was so dark that even the faint light leaking from the hall lamp that burned around a bend of the corridor was of no use. Then the door hinges squeaked and she thought: It's Robert, or else his father. If so she would strike the old man on the shins. But a ghost entered — Diana.