Salt Creek (14 page)

‘Are you too warm, Hester?' he asked.

‘I am warm enough,' I said, and got up to remove the plates. ‘Addie?'

She flounced about, using clearing the table as an excuse to swish her skirts, which had grown quite full.

‘Did you put on every petticoat you possess?' I hissed at her, crossing the walkway to the kitchen. ‘You look completely ridiculous.'

‘You're only cross because you didn't think of it first.'

‘I am not.'

‘You are.
Charles
,' she said breathlessly.

‘I do not say that.'

‘You do a bit.' She darted ahead and clattered the dishes on the kitchen table and came skipping back past me. She was growing too and what was to be done about that? Her bodice was too tight. Perhaps a gusset could be inserted under the arm or one of Mama's dresses could be cut down.

Mr Bagshott was holding forth when I came back. ‘I have found it to be a healthy environment here in general,' Mr Bagshott said, and he went on to speak of a visit he had made for the General Board of Health to a small town called Haworth in North Yorkshire, where almost half of all the children died before the age of six. ‘Typhoid, consumption, smallpox, scarlet fever. Terrible. It was my unhappy task to determine the sources of the infection and to give advice. I tell you that it did not cease to rain or snow or mizzle or mist from one week to the next. And the wind: I thought I would be blown off those moors. All was damp, houses, animals, people alike. There was a family there who offered me lodging, but I declined when I heard of the recent loss of one of the daughters of the household. But she had died elsewhere, I discovered. The Brontës – perhaps you've heard of them. Writers they were. They wrote under other names.'

‘Bell? Currer Bell, do you mean? And Ellis Bell?' I said.

‘That's it. They both died, I heard. The last of them not so long ago – Currer, I think. Another sister was dead already. Quiet little things. They became quite gay after tasting from the cup. Their brother now, was another matter. Oh, a hard life. They were gently bred and reared and spent all their hours writing, or so I heard. But I did not meet them often. You know of them?'

‘Of course! I should think everyone must know of them. I had their books in Adelaide. Grandmama gave me them.' I almost leapt up; I could not help my excitement. Of all the strange things, that this man in the wilds of the Coorong had met the author of
Jane Eyre: An Autobiography
.

‘You have read them? A girl your age?' he said.

Papa cleared his throat.

‘You did not think them rather intense, rather exciting for a young girl?' Mr Bagshott said. ‘I do not myself hold with fiction.'

‘I will not say I was easy,' Papa said. ‘But my mother in law thought them full of common sense—'

‘And true feeling,' Mama said and they both laughed as if this were a favourite joke between them. It was the old Mama and we all turned to see her smiling so free, as if she might keep smiling for a while after, and the Bagshotts looked about the table in confusion.

‘Well,' Mr Bagshott said.

‘We believe that educating females is proper,' Papa said.

‘As do I and my wife.'

‘Including mathematics and the other branches of higher learning,' Papa said.

‘Indeed?' Mr Bagshott said.

I said, ‘Grandmama says, “Men know fools make the best slaves.” Her mother was fond of saying it.'

Mr Bagshott turned his head very slow. ‘Really.'

Papa cleared his throat, ‘But those books – we were glad to leave them behind.'

‘I was not,' I said. ‘Tell us, Mr Bagshott, what were they like – the ladies, that is?'

All I got in response was a look of reproof so that I saw that I had appeared forward or outspoken or something of the sort. I could no more get information or knowledge out of Mr Bagshott than I could lift a limpet with my bare hands and I was so disgusted with him that I hardly knew what to say. Charles caught my eye as if he understood my feelings though I do not see how he could.

‘Nothing could have saved them,' Mr Bagshott said. ‘I decided then that I would not willingly pass further time in such inclement climes and resolved to find a new world, a real one, not of the imagination such as they wove in their fictions. I would not have children as pale and frail and stunted. The Americas beckoned but as luck would have it I attended a lecture given by the South Australia Company in London and was persuaded that Australia represented the best prospects. Soon enough my good wife and I had set our course for the Antipodes. Your children are as fine looking as ever I saw.' From this I deduced that he believed his own children to be finer looking as I have observed that people praise where they are conscious of being in a state of comfortable superiority.

‘All but Hugh born here. And your son is an excellent young fellow. You must be proud,' Papa said, from which I deduced that he felt us to be superior. It is true that Stanton was larger and more muscular, doubtless from the physical work that he was obliged to do, yet his consciousness of his looks and stature made him less attractive, not only to me, but I felt absolutely.

Tull had been quiet at first but became at ease while talking to Fred, and after lunch they found the chessboard and sat playing on the veranda with Addie for company. She had given up hope of captivating Charles.

Mr Bagshott came out with his pipe and lit and drew in and blew out several quick, thick clouds of smoke across them, making a sucking crackling sound at each breath. Fred and Tull played on.

‘Chess – an excellent game, which may be played with enjoyment regardless of the level of skill,' Mr Bagshott said to no one. ‘Impressive that you have taught him the moves, Frederick.'

‘Thank you,' Fred said. ‘Do you play, sir?'

‘I do, I do. I might be able to teach you a trick or two, young man.' He rocked onto his toes and back. ‘Young men,' he amended, nodding at Tull.

‘Why not play Tull, since he hasn't been playing as long? Some suggestions for a new player perhaps?'

Tull glared at Fred.

‘Of course. I'd be delighted.'

‘Very well,' Tull said. He sounded calm enough but I thought he was uneasy at the prospect.

Fred swept the board, which was a pity. The game had been poised with interesting traps about to be sprung. Perhaps Mr Bagshott hadn't noticed that. I would not say we were skilled players, rather that it was a diversion in the evenings and on Sunday afternoons. They reset the board and Fred moved aside and they settled themselves.

Poor Mr Bagshott. Stanton and Albert had long since given up playing against Tull. Hugh pretended he wasn't trying, but humouring Tull. It was the opposite; Tull did not play his best game with Hugh, leaving open enticing routes that might have helped him had he perceived them. He had bested me more than once of late. He played the game most originally – to us, that is. It was mathematical to me, a weighing up of lines of power and the opponent's strengths and weaknesses. Sometimes it was as if Tull was exploring the limits of a single piece's strength, or the ways it might react to threat. Then he would appear to forget about it, luring his opponent on another front before circling back. I was not so aware of this then, but have thought of it often in the intervening years and come to this conclusion, replaying moves while lying awake in darkness. (I sleep rather poorly.) Then, all I knew was that the game became new once more. Fred felt it too, I think. We seldom played each other. The paths our minds moved along were too similar to be of interest.

Tull did not spare Mr Bagshott, but Mr Bagshott persisted and the only agitation he showed was the increasing speed of his smoking, the clouds from it encircling his head in a thick mist. Once, to put Tull off his game, I think, he said, ‘Quite an unusual home then – educating females and natives. I'm not sure—' He stopped speaking then; Tull had captured his queen. At the end he looked at the devastation and lifted his head, staring from Tull to Fred and back again. ‘I see what you've done, the lesson you have taught me, and I thank you for it.'

‘Thank you for the game, Mr Bagshott,' Tull said, polite but still uneasy. He would be wondering whether he should have let Mr Bagshott win, I suppose.

Mr Bagshott nodded and stood – ‘I do wonder though what will lie at the end of it.' He put some more tobacco in his pipe and strolled away.

Charles rowed out to fetch his sketch book and when he returned put it before Mama on the cleared table – the rest of us gathered behind her to see – and sat at her side as she turned the pages, explaining the sketches to us and telling what lay beyond the edges of the pictures he had drawn. Some of the sketches were very fine, I thought, as were the houses in them. They appeared so light to me and must have been spacious. I would like to have opened some of those doors and walked through the rooms of those houses. What would they hold? Who would live in them?

‘Where are the people?' Addie said. ‘I want to see them and the clothes they wear. Are they young or old?'

‘Charles is recording the houses, not their owners,' Mr Bagshott said from the other side of the table.

‘No people?' Addie burst out.

Mr Bagshott lifted a finger in admonition as I wished Papa and Mama would. Addie subsided, which was a rare enough thing, and he sipped his tea and wiped his whiskers before he spoke again. ‘The commission is for the homesteads, not the owners.'

Fred came forward to stand at Charles's shoulder. His eyes were alight and moved swiftly across the turning pages. ‘That's a good sized book,' he said.

‘It is,' Charles said. ‘And the paper – see?' Fred felt the corner of the page Charles held with finger and thumb.

‘It's heavy,' he said, surprised.

‘Gives more depth.'

‘Ah, I see,' Fred said. The longing in him for one of these books was plain. There was paper for writing and book keeping, but nothing like this hereabouts. Mama might be persuaded to write to Grandmama to see if she could send a book or two. I would talk to her later. Fred asked for so little.

When Mama tired of it and rose and Albert and Addie and Tull had left, Fred remained and when Charles asked if he would like to continue looking he nodded his head but would not speak. Charles said, ‘Be careful, now, you hear?'

Fred was almost overcome, but managed, ‘Yes – sir.'

‘Sir, am I now?' Charles asked no one in particular. ‘I think Charles will do well enough.'

Later, towards evening but not yet supper, he found me on the shore looking at the changing light. It was one of our few entertainments in these parts and I had developed a taste for it. I could not help knowing that he had been anchored away from shore sketching our house for a good part of the afternoon while his father dozed on the veranda in the afternoon sun. I had moved further around from our small beach lest he imagine that I was watching him because I was not but was sitting on a tussock of grass that suited me very well. They made fine seats, some of them sat on so oft that they had parted and become bald in the middle like the parson's head in Adelaide. It amused me to think of sitting on him. He was a dull man, and quite
quite
determined to impart his views and thereby to improve us all.

Seeing me, Charles veered from the path through the saltbush, which came up to his waist. The bushes resisted, gave way and sprang back into place as he moved through them. Evidently he did not feel constrained by pathways. I smoothed the skirt of my dress, which was so faded these days that I had to look to remind myself of the old pattern of pink flowers against the blue. Charles tugged free of the bushes and approached and sat on the next tussock over – Fred's and Tull's, but he was not to know that.

He appeared uncertain and removed his hat and turned it in his hands. He had fine fingers, and long. ‘Have I offended you?'

‘Offended? No. It is just that I have become unused to company.'

‘Yet Addie is friendly. Your father is friendly, and your mother too.'

I turned from the sky to face him. ‘Addie is nothing but a flirt, Papa hopes to impress you and your father both and Mama is glad of company.'

‘I
have
offended you.' He gave another of his boyish smiles.

‘Do not think you can please me. I know quite well how we appear.'

‘I wish I knew what I could say. I wish I knew what I could do to change your opinion of us, of me. I do not pity you if that is what you think. Do you miss town life?'

‘I have no fear of my own company, if that is what you mean. It is the tedium. The sun rises and sets; the wind blows strong or a little; the rain falls or does not; and the clouds – their formations change, it is true. There may be reasons for these things, as Papa says, but I have little interest in them.'

‘If there is something I could do, I wish you would say.'