A Waltz for Matilda (21 page)

She didn’t understand what had happened. She didn’t know why it had happened either. Only one thing was clear: Mr Sampson had lost his job, his home and his horse.

He stood up, nodded to her and turned to go.

‘No, please: wait.’

He turned.

‘What will you do now?’

‘Like he said. I got to go.’

‘Where? Can you get a job on one of the other properties?’

He seemed reluctant to talk. ‘Other bosses won’t hire me now. The boys should be right, but.’

‘Your sons? You think he’s fired them too?’

‘Maybe. Best they go, now, eh? Best they go.’

It isn’t fair for one man to have so much power, she thought. Not to take one man’s life, and then another’s house and job and horse.

Mr Sampson looked away, speaking almost to himself. ‘My dad built my house. Cut the wood. Put a new roof on myself. Sold possum skins to buy the iron.’

‘Then it’s
your
house?’

Mr Sampson looked back at her, his face still impassive. ‘House is on his land.’

She spoke without thinking. ‘Move the house then!’

A few months ago she had lived in a world where houses just — were. You rented or if you were lucky bought them, you lived or died in them. Not now. ‘You and your boys — take the wood and the iron.’

Auntie Love appeared in the doorway, her old dress hanging on her thin frame. She looked at Matilda without speaking.

Suddenly she laughed. It was the first time Matilda had heard her laugh like that. And then Mr Sampson was laughing too. It seemed such a natural sound, so much a part of who they were. It was as though ropes had fallen off them.

‘Move the house!’ chanted Auntie Love.

‘Move the house!’ Mr Sampson slapped his hat against his side and laughed again. ‘There’s a spot other side of Dhirrayn.’

‘Dhirrayn?’

He gestured to the cliffs and the hill above. ‘Dhirrayn.’

‘But that’s —’ She stopped. That was Moura land. Her land.

But where else are Mr Sampson and his wife to go? she thought. All land was owned by someone. Wasn’t it?

Mr Sampson seemed not to have even realised he should have asked her first. ‘Boys and I can take the place apart after dark. Boss won’t know what’s hit him, eh? Get the boys to drive the sheep over now, afore it gets dark.’

‘Sheep?’

‘Poddies. Elsie’s been feedin’ them.’

‘They’d be your sheep but on my land,’ she said slowly.

The laughter stopped. He stared at her. Auntie Love stared too. She was aware that there was so much unsaid, so much she didn’t understand.

‘It’s all right,’ she added quickly.

But the words had been spoken. The laughter had vanished. Mr Sampson said at last, ‘You get half of what the poddies bring. Half for the wool, half of the meat. That’s the way the boss does it.’ He paused and added, ‘I’d be workin’ for you, eh?’

It wasn’t quite a question or a statement. She wished she knew what her father would have said, even Aunt Ann. ‘I’d have to give you rations? I … I haven’t got enough money.’

He shrugged. ‘Don’t need rations. Plenty roos, other tucker.’

It wasn’t right. But she didn’t know what right was. She thought of the crowded hall of unionists. Did any of them know, either? Or were they also trying to work out something that might be truly fair?

‘How about everything we make we share?’ she said slowly. ‘Not just from your poddies. Always, whatever we make from sheep on Moura. Half for you. Half for me.’

It still didn’t seem fair. They were his sheep and his skill. But it was her land. That had to count for something.

To her surprise he smiled again, as if she
had
got something right. He nodded, then headed out the door and down the steps, as though there was nothing more to say.

Matilda put the letter down, and stared out the window. The sheep were grazing below the spring, and an eagle soared high above her valley.

So the remote, fashionable woman and her daughter at the railway siding had been part of the lost world of Aunt Ann and their cottage. It seemed so impossible, but it made sense too. The Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League brought together so many women — capable, determined women like Mrs Ellsmore and Aunt Ann. She smiled, imagining Mr Drinkwater trying to boss his half-sister.

Would things have been different if she had gone to Mrs Ellsmore that first day, instead of to Mr Gotobed and his
friends? If she had said, ‘Excuse me, I am Matilda O’Halloran, can you help me please?’ Would Mrs Ellsmore have convinced Mr Drinkwater not to try to trap her father with the poddy sheep?

There was no way to know. But it was strangely good to know that somehow Aunt Ann was still helping to take care of her, even now. If she had known her aunt’s friends might help her she would never have left the city. But leave Moura now? She shook her head.

Why hadn’t Mum let Aunt Ann’s friends know how bad things were? Pride, she supposed, not wanting anyone to know the bailiffs had taken their furniture, even Aunt Ann’s gold locket.

Mr Gotobed had brought the letter and the big parcel out that morning, on his way to do some work at Drinkwater. It had been sent to the pub ‘to be collected’. Mrs Ellsmore might be Temperance, like Aunt Ann and Mum, but she knew that the hotel was the one sure place to find Mr Gotobed or someone from the union who knew her. Matilda supposed that Mrs Ellsmore too doubted that Mr Drinkwater would pass on the mail to Moura.

She worked at the knot around the brown paper. It would be easier to cut it, but string was precious. Auntie Love made string from bark and what Matilda suspected was her own hair, but it wasn’t as strong as proper string, though it was good for tying her hair back.

She opened the brown paper and stared. She wouldn’t need to use string for her plaits now. A cluster of hair ribbons, white and yellow and pale green. A new white dress — she fingered the lace on it wistfully. She had worn the other white dress only once, when Mr Gotobed and his mates had arrived to take her in to
the opening of the Workers’ Institute in town, with its library and reading room.

By the time she’d got home the dress had dust stains on the hem and perspiration stains under the arms. The stains had vanished by the time she’d boiled the dress in the cooking pot, then dried it on a clothesline of plaited string stretched between the trees, using the pegs her father must have carved years ago. Now the dress was too crumpled to wear, and she had no iron.

She lifted the new dress, folded it carefully in the brown paper again and put it in the chest in her room, wrapped in a blanket to keep away the dust that seeped into every crevice, and then looked at the other garments. Six pairs of flannel trousers, a tweed jacket, six collarless shirts, a pair of boots.

She hoped the boots fitted Mr Sampson. The shirts and trousers looked like they might be a bit too big, but nothing that a belt or braces couldn’t fix, or a bit of needlework.

She lifted up a pair of flannels thoughtfully. A few hours’ sewing would make them fit her too. It was so much easier wearing trousers, and there was no one who minded to see her. She could always run and change if Hey You warned of visitors, although she suspected that neither Mr Doo nor Mr Gotobed and his mates would worry.

Mr Drinkwater probably would. She grinned at the thought of shocking Mr Drinkwater. But he hadn’t ridden by again, not even when Mr Sampson’s house had vanished in the night, and his mob of poddies too. There had been more sheep than she’d expected, eighteen of them, not just this year’s poddies but some older ones, as well.

Mr Sampson’s house was finished now, though she gathered it was smaller than it had been, for there was a pile of corrugated
iron left over. Perhaps neither he nor Elsie needed more than a single room now their boys were working on other properties.

She saw something move out of the corner of her eye. She froze, then slowly turned her head.

It was a snake, a red-bellied black one, its tiny head peering into the dish where she kept her water. It stopped too, as soon as it sensed her movement, lying there as though to say, ‘I am a stick.’

She almost grinned. The two of them, both too scared to move. If she moved it might strike her, kill her. If it moved she might kill it — if she knew how to kill a snake, which she didn’t. But the snake didn’t know that.

Suddenly she heard steps shuffle up the steps, and breathed in relief. Hey You padded into the room, followed by Auntie Love, carrying an armful of dead branches for the fire.

‘Stop.’ Matilda nodded over to the water dish. ‘Snake.’

Hey You dropped to his stomach, staring at the reptile. Auntie Love smiled. She put down the wood, then made a short lunge. Suddenly the snake’s tail was in her hands, and the head cracked once, twice, against the floor.

The snake writhed, but Matilda could see that it was dead, its head smashed. It had taken about five seconds.

For a moment she felt like crying at the loss of its beauty. Because it had been beautiful, even though deadly — the shiny black, the flash of red like a flower, the silent grace of it. And then the loss faded, and she was just glad that her house was snake-free.

She’d check the bed, though, tonight.

‘Good tucker.’ Auntie Love grinned.

‘Errk! Not snake!’

Auntie Love laughed. ‘You got carrots, potatoes, big pot. Stew ‘em up.’

She couldn’t eat snake. But Aunt Ann had made breaded eel. Maybe if she pretended the snake was eel …

‘It won’t poison us?’

Auntie laughed again. She pantomimed horror, clutching her throat like she’d been poisoned, then shook her head. She took the snake to the table and grabbed a knife. She sliced off the head, then began to pull off the skin, her left hand still clumsy.

Matilda glanced away. Next time, she thought. I’ll watch how she does it next time. I’ll never eat it if I see how she cleans it now, and if I don’t eat it she’ll be hurt.

At least Auntie Love was wearing a dress again today. Matilda hoped she wouldn’t appear without her clothes again. It was embarrassing.

But why had she done it? It was almost a taunt to Mr Drinkwater, as though to say: ‘I am a wild native, and there is nothing you can do about it.’

And there isn’t, thought Matilda stubbornly. No one was going to shoot natives on Moura land — or Drinkwater, if she could help it. And there was no way Mr and Mrs Sampson or Auntie Love were going to be sent to a reserve, either.

Hey You gave a sudden yap, then trotted out the door. Matilda followed him, glad to have an excuse to leave the kitchen while Auntie Love dealt with the snake.

It was Mr Sampson and his two dogs, pushing the mob of sheep — now containing Mrs Dawkins and her two lambs — toward the open gate of the stockyards. The dogs worked either side of him, yapping and snapping to keep the sheep headed toward the gate.

Matilda ran down to him. ‘What are you doing?’

‘Checkin’ for fly strike.’

‘What’s that?’

He shook his head. ‘Don’t worry, missy. I do it.’

‘But they’re my sheep too now, aren’t they? I should help you.’

Mr Sampson looked even more shocked than she had been at the idea of eating snake. ‘Not right. Dirty work, missy.’

‘Call me Matilda. Please, Mr Sampson.’

He stared at her, then nodded. The sheep were inside now. He shut the gate, then picked up a pair of hand shears and a bucket of something dark and evil smelling. There was a strange-looking brush sticking out of the gloopy stuff.

‘What’s that?’

‘Bit o’ wattle bark, turps, tobacco. Kill the strike.’

At least he didn’t call her ‘missy’ this time, even if he hadn’t said ‘Matilda’, either. ‘What’s strike?’

He looked at her consideringly, then slipped between the slats of the gate into the yards. She followed him. His dogs stayed outside, lying on their bellies, looking cautiously at Hey You, seated imperiously now up on the verandah as though to say to the other dogs, ‘Just remember all this is mine.’

Mr Sampson lunged, grabbing one of the ewes by the neck. A sudden movement and it was seated on its bottom, looking stupid. Mr Sampson ran his hand through its fleece, then pointed at a damp-looking patch. ‘Strike.’