Summer at Mount Hope (22 page)

It was a very old print of a rigid, serious couple surrounded by stiff, over-bustled and bearded attendants against a backdrop of drapes and Roman columns. Her parents glared back at her. Phoebe and Rufus Robertson, 1843, she read on the back.

‘Deary-me,' she winced, ‘it's hard to imagine that people loved each other back in the olden days. Do you remember, Margaret? Did our parents love each other?'

‘Yes!' cried Margaret, ‘they did. Unlike you. You got your come-uppence, seizing on Robert for security and ending up in the wilderness.'

Maude pressed the photograph to her bosom and cried.

‘It was sad for them to end that way,' said Margaret. She frowned at her big sister. ‘But aren't you being a little dramatic, Maude? At least they were together when the buggy crashed.'

‘Actually,' said Maude, ‘they were crushed by a load of hay. A passing wagon went into a pothole and the load shifted. It fell right on top of them. I've never felt safe outside since.'

She placed the photograph carefully in the box labelled, Maude Crupp. If they had lived, she thought, I might have got the life I deserved.

Monday, January 29, 1894

S
pot came home by himself on Monday wearing new shoes. The farrier had bathed his feet, given him a pedicure and new built-up shoes to ease the pressure on his pedal bone, and then put him in the holding yard. Spot had promptly nosed the wire from around the top of the post and gambolled across the plain like a big black foal on a spring day.

Robert and Phoeba had just settled on the front veranda to wait out the afternoon heat; Robert was smoothing his newspapers across his knees and Phoeba had let three shots off at the birds when Spot trotted around the corner and stood with his new feet on the bottom step.

‘Right then,' said Robert, ‘Angela can go back.'

‘No,' cried Lilith, running down the passage. ‘We should keep them both and buy a barouche.'

‘More horses means more manure, Lilith! I'd have to start each day shovelling it all over the vegetable patch. There'd be more diseases and more bills. We'd have to buy another harness and I'd have to spend an hour each day fitting the horses so you could drive over to have tea with Widow Pearson and gossip. If you want a barouche, marry someone rich.'

‘Look,' said Phoeba, as the Hampden trotted through the intersection and headed for Overton. It sagged under a load of wing-backed chairs, lamps, a writing desk, dressing table, the mahogany box containing the fine lace duchesse runners and afternoon tea cloths, the good crockery and the silver cutlery, and the washing machine. Hadley was driving and Henrietta jigged along behind on Liberty. She raised her hat and waved up to Mount Hope. They all waved back.

‘I'll ride Angela back,' said Phoeba, eager to see Henrietta and her new home. She might see Rudolph, and then she could thank him for Spot's new shoes. Then she would confront Marius, tell him he must marry Lilith. And Robert and Lilith would collect her later in the sulky – a test run for Spot in his new shoes – and she would announce it to her father. She had the whole encounter planned, and ran to the stables.

Underway, Angela coughed once or twice but kept on. Then she stumbled and slowed.

‘Whoa,' said Phoeba, patting her dark neck. The horse wobbled to a halt, swayed gently, coughed again and crumpled. Her great, shiny head dropped and her soft nose rested in the gravel, blasting away two scoops as her lungs emptied. Phoeba was left sitting on top of the mare like a stork on a hippopotamus, one foot still in the stirrup.

‘Gracious,' she said.

Angela's innards shifted, moving the centre of balance sideways, and Phoeba jumped up and stepped back quickly as the horse rolled onto her side, her legs kicking out from under her and scattering the dirt.

Angela was dead.

Phoeba stood next to her in the middle of the road, stunned. She felt the breeze touch her injured cheek through her hat net, heard the blood rushing in her ears. All around her, birds cawed and crickets and geckos tickled in the dry grass.

‘Gracious,' she said again, and crouched down at Angela's head to peer into her cloudy eyes.

‘I'm sorry, poor thing.'

She stepped over the front legs, undid the girth strap, wrenched the saddle out from under the horse and was working the bit from Angela's mouth when Freckle arrived. He regarded her as he would a masked man outside a bank.

‘Your mother's coming home tomorrow on the four o'clocker.'

‘Thank you, Freckle,' she said, shakily. She stared at Angela. ‘I didn't do anything. She just sort of—'

‘Fell down dead,' said Freckle, flatly. ‘Horses can live up to thirty-six years old, or more, unless you kill them of course.'

‘I wasn't … she's not even sweating.'

They looked at the great mound of static horseflesh on the gravel.

‘You better stick to Spot, missus. He seems to like you, wants to stick with you.'

‘Can you carry the saddle up to the house, please?'

Freckle looked doubtful and patted his horse's neck.

‘I'll give you a penny when I've got one,' said Phoeba.

His horse stepped away from her.

Phoeba nodded towards the static horse. ‘It's just bad luck, I suppose.'

‘For the horse,' said Freckle reaching out for the saddle. ‘I hope she made the best of it while she was here.'

‘Yes,' Phoeba said, and started up the lane, perplexed and dismayed. Angela must have had a bad heart, or something. It was another omen, she decided, a sign that it was prudent to make the best of life.

She stumbled through the front gate to find her father still on the front veranda reading the paper. ‘Freckle charged me standard freight fares to transport that saddle and bridle!' he called. ‘You could easily have put them behind the fence until later.'

Phoeba lowered her face into her hands and cried, her tears sliding through her leather gloves. She'd wanted to see Henrietta, to talk to her about Lilith and Marius, to tell her about the itinerants stealing her fruit and her poor chickens. What if they stole the winter preserves? She'd just wanted someone she could talk to. And was Overton going bad and what would happen to everyone else if they did?

Robert came down the steps, his arms spread. ‘Now now, Phoeba, this isn't like you. It isn't as bad as it seems.'

But it was. She felt sure it was.

He gave her a glass of wine and decided to cheer her up by reading her the paper. ‘John Makin was hanged after the discovery of seven murdered babies who met their fate under Mr Makin and his wife Sarah's baby farming practices … Martha Needle was hanged today for the arsenic poisoning of her husband and three children and her new fiancé's brother…'

Lilith arrived, smoothing her riding gloves. Her hat was perched at a jolly angle and her driving coat featured a sprig of gum blossom on the lapel. Her weeping sister stopped her short.

‘Oh,' said Lilith. ‘Does this mean, Dad, that you and I are not going to Overton?'

Tuesday, January 30, 1894

I
t was while she waited for the four o'clocker that Phoeba decided she would subject herself to curling irons for the dance on Saturday night. Naturally she would wear her new blouse. And if Rudolph didn't ask her for a dance, then she would ask him. And if he couldn't dance, then she would strike up a conversation with him. They had discussed the obvious things – the drought, banks and swaggies. She would search through the newspapers for something fascinating. And she would tackle the Lilith and Marius dilemma. She perused the papers, but there was hardly anything:
NEW TIVOLI THEATRE OPENS IN SYDNEY
– that didn't give her much of an opening. When the train drew into the siding, a window shot up and her mother leaned from the window, waving away the smoke and steam.

‘Take these,' she called, shoving some brown-paper wrapped paintings at Phoeba and gathering her bags and packages.

‘What a surprise,' said Phoeba. ‘Paintings.'

Behind her, perched on the edge of her seat, Aunt Margaret was tight-lipped with anticipation and looking very small. She pulled her carpetbag and boxes closer to her.

‘Two hours from your new life, Aunt,' said Phoeba, sounding jolly.

‘Mr Spark will be there to meet me,' said Aunt Margaret confidently, but it was clear she was terrified. ‘Do you think I have made a mistake, Phoeba?'

‘I think it's a perfect opportunity for a new start, Aunt. We'll hear all about it at the dance?'

‘Yes,' said her aunt.

The mailman put the last of Maude's packages and boxes on the platform and the guard blew his whistle.

‘Remember. New challenges,' said Phoeba, reaching through the window to squeeze her aunt's hand.

‘Has my peach parer come?' asked Maude. ‘Are there swaggies about? Have we got the Collector?'

‘No, no and yes,' said Phoeba, loading the boxes onto the sulky.

Behind them, the mailman bent to pick up the single mailbag left on the siding. He tugged, screamed, and grabbed the small of his back. Freckle had nailed it to the platform.

‘I'm ruined,' he cried, shaking his fist at Flynn's shop.

Maude prattled on about the perils of her sister's new life all the way home. ‘It will fail,' she said, ‘and she will end up on the streets, or at Mount Hope with us. She's supposed to cook, so I hope they like sandwiches!'

Suddenly Maude wrenched her gloves off and shrugged her shawl from her shoulders. ‘This change of mine,' she said, ‘dreadful business. They put some women in asylums, you know, but they say if you have children it's not so bad.' She opened her knees, flapped her skirt up and down. ‘Let that be a warning to you, Miss Phoeba Crupp.'

Phoeba didn't care about children. She'd never felt an urge to have them and wasn't the type to stop at a pram and goo-goo over babies, like Lilith and Maude. There was nothing wrong with her. Henrietta was the same, so was Aunt Margaret.

There was activity at the intersection but this time it had nothing to do with the dented Sunshine harvester that still sat there. It was Mr Titterton, riding postilion with a team of four draught horses.

‘I have bought you cleminite for your face,' continued Maude, ‘and you will scoff, Phoeba, but I also have some lace and serviettes for your trousseau. I worry that you're unbecoming and now your aunt has ruined your chance of marrying anyone other than Hadley—'

‘I've been telling you for weeks,' Phoeba cut in, ‘I'm not marrying Hadley.'

‘Well who else will marry you? You'll end up like Margaret, living with strangers in Melbourne and it's such a dangerous place …' Maude fell silent and her damp handkerchief froze in mid-air. Spot led them casually around Angela's carcass in the centre of the intersection. It had been attached to Mr Titterton's team by a rope looped around its stiff hooves and head. Mr Titterton lifted his hat to Maude and Phoeba.

‘Good evening,' said Maude.

Mr Titterton nudged the draught horse and the team trudged across the tufty common, with Angela leaving a wide, dark groove and a wake of flattened grass.

Wednesday, January 31, 1894

O
n Wednesday, the thresher team unlooped the engine from the thresher, gathered its scythes and forks, left Jessops' and set up on the edge of Hadleys' neat feed crop. The water boy filled his tank from the tower near the siding which meant Freckle had the news to spread on his mail round.

Thursday, February 1, 1894

H
adley wore his new white moles – 7/6 from Lassetters, plus postage and tuppence to Freckle. Now that they had a washing machine, white moles were no longer a great hardship for his sister. He was feeling successful and in charge. He was feeling manly. He had quelled a strike and received a wonderful letter of recommendation from Marius Overton. He would have preferred one from Guston but that would risk a letter recommending Mr Parsons instead. His grain crop filled the morning air with sunny ripeness; and Phoeba, tidy and sensible in her plain brown skirt and hatnet, was driving towards him with her leather gloves, scythe and knife. Her face and hands were still scabbed, but healing, and she walked now without stiffness.

‘You can do stooking,' said Hadley, firmly. ‘Scything is too hard for you.'

She didn't object and joined the rakers and stookers moving steadily behind the scythers. He watched her pull on the fine chain attached to her hem brooch and he admired her firm shins emerging as her hem rose. She moved along at once, scraping stalks together, then tying them into a neat bunch that she leaned against a neat stook.

‘She's a grand girl,' said a voice next to him.

‘Stubborn though,' Hadley answered before he'd considered who was next to him admiring Phoeba. It was Steel. ‘I've known that since I was ten years old,' said Hadley.

‘She'll make a good vintner, one day,' said Steel.

‘She's good at anything once she makes up her mind about it,' said Hadley. ‘The trick with Phoeba,' he continued, his confidence swelling, ‘is to get her to set her mind to it. Once that's done …'

Again, Steel was conciliatory. Hadley sensed no competition from the man over Phoeba, so decided to boast. ‘I haven't told you about my ram emasculator, have I, Steel? It's an idea I've refined over many years. Come and see the prototype.'

‘I'm interested in anything innovative,' said Rudolph following Hadley towards the machinery shed.

The emasculator was solid metal, like a squat guillotine, with a dull, round-edge blade. ‘First,' said Hadley, lifting the guillotine handle, ‘you sit the ram in the appropriate position and drape its testicle sack over the base of the guillotine.' Hadley let go of the handle and the blade thudded heavily on the base. ‘Strike the blade once or twice without making a tear in the sheep's skin.'