Summer at Mount Hope (25 page)

‘To most people?' she asked, looking him in the eye, but he looked over her shoulder and wound her around and around. She thought about Mr and Mrs Overton who didn't love each other. Her mother had married her father for security and neither of them appeared to like anything about the other. Widow Pearson had married for prestige. Mr Titterton had married for company, home comforts and perhaps land. Her aunt was no longer lonely and poor but smitten, glowing and enslaved to her strange, new romantic love. And there was something in Rudolph's past, thought Phoeba, a sadness that made him restless, something that sent him away from England. She wanted to know what, or who, it was that made him wary of a loving partner. Maybe Henrietta was right. Perhaps Mrs Flynn was the happiest person they knew.

The music began to wind down and Rudolph danced her towards the refreshment table.

‘Your feet are doing well,' she said.

‘Thank you, Phoeba.'

Everybody seemed to get whatever they wanted. Lilith would get what she wanted. Phoeba would get what she wanted, in time. Why not marry and have children and have everything else as well – the grapes, the farm, a life.

‘I've enjoyed this dance,' he said. ‘I don't normally risk it.'

‘People get married for lots of reasons, don't they?' she said, following her own train of thought and wanting him to stay and talk to her – keep his hand on her waist.

‘They do.'

The music was slowing to a shuffle.

‘I could only marry someone who let me do as I please,' she said, boldly, ‘and I would let him do as he pleased.'

‘Naturally,' he said, at they stopped moving. ‘It's only right and fair.'

She sighed, relieved. At last someone, a man, who thought like her. Henrietta would be impressed.

‘Phoeba, would you like a drink?' It was Hadley, standing with a glass of punch in each hand.

‘Thanks, Hadley, but I can get one myself.' It came more sharply than she'd intended and Hadley flinched, just a little, but enough for Rudolph to step back. He let her hand go and said, ‘It's been a pleasure.' She watched him wind his way through the crowd, felt cool air on her empty hand.

‘Why is it, Hadley, that everywhere I turn you're there?'

‘You're my friend, Phoeba, and tonight there's danger around. I've told Henrietta, and the fire truck is full. Just keep your wits about you.'

She had no idea what he was talking about and she wasn't interested. She was furious, wanted to cry, didn't want to be protected. The shearers had gone, the itinerants were outside, there was no danger. The only person she had offended was Lilith, and Lilith didn't matter.

‘Hadley, let me be!' she said icily, and picked up her hem. She marched across the dance floor towards the loading dock and the summer night, trembling inside, cross and disappointed, and longing to dance with Rudolph again. Was that it? Was it over for the night? Four dances?

The caller announced a barn-dance: it was the one dance she always started with Hadley. They'd had a game when they were little to see if they could get back to one another before the music ended.

Freckle was sitting on the edge of the loading dock watching the crops glow silver under the full moon. She sat down next to him, and swung her legs to the music as the dancers behind them shifted across the dull floor. Under the tree, the itinerants danced too, one two three kick, back two three kick, swing, slide, slide, under, turn and onto the next …

‘Smells like rain,' said Freckle.

Phoeba looked up. The stars had vanished and the full moon shone through clouds like a lantern behind ruched muslin. But Phoeba wanted to know about Hadley's ‘danger'. Was Overton in trouble? And did Freckle know anything about Rudolph?

‘Tell me, Freckle, is Mr Overton in trouble?'

‘Everyone's in trouble, missus,' he said, his forehead twisted in worry. He stood up. ‘I'd keep my ears and eyes open tonight.'

She followed him. ‘It's the itinerants, isn't it?'

‘I'm sorry, I've done everything I can,' he said and held his cup out to Mrs Overton, who stood stiffly behind the refreshment table. She was only in attendance because the staff had been let go.

‘How are ya', Missus?' said Freckle brightly, dipping his cup into the punch bowl himself.

‘Good evening, Freckle,' said Mrs Overton. She held the ladle between two fingers but didn't seem to know what to do with it.

Phoeba had never heard the word ‘Freckle' said so fluently. Then Mrs Overton recognised Phoeba.

‘My dear,' she said, ‘how lovely to see you recovered from your accident. I have vanishing cream. You must come and see me. It will make the redness go. Come tomorrow after church?'

‘Of course.'

Suddenly, Mrs Titterton was beside Phoeba, and Lilith was there too, nudging Phoeba aside and holding her cup out to Mrs Overton. Here they are, thought Phoeba, the competitors.

Mrs Overton picked up the ladle again, turned it over in her hand then passed it to Lilith.

‘Please help yourself to refreshments,' she said.

Maude leaned close to Mrs Titterton. ‘Have you been to tea since you moved to Overton?' she whispered.

‘No,' said Mrs Titterton, her voice like fizzing acid. ‘You'd think she'd have better manners. But then they say she arranged for Marius to marryAgnes for her money. They say he didn't love his wife, say he went on a holiday after she died.'

Lilith's blue eyes narrowed and her lip curled. ‘That's a vicious lie, Widow Poison.'

‘I am Mrs Titterton now and they say—'

‘They? Who are they? I think you are they. Marius loved Agnes when she was alive.'

Mrs Overton put her hand to her cameos, and Maude started flapping her handkerchief furiously; guests were beginning to stare.

Mrs Titterton began to swoon, falling towards Henrietta, who caught her mother by the upper arm and held her. Hadley picked up an empty cup for punch but Lilith pushed it away. ‘Marius did everything he could to save them.'

Mrs Titterton rallied, hissing, ‘I suppose Marius Overton told you that on one of the occasions you met him at the outcrop?'

Mrs Overton's eyebrows raised and she placed three fingers on the table, steadying herself. Maude gasped; Phoeba steadied her. It wasn't meant to be this brutal – a revelation like this might ruin everything.

Ashley rubbed his hands and said, ‘Montagues and Capulets!' The vicar put down his plate of sandwiches: ‘Ladies, please …' but Lilith turned to Mrs Overton. ‘The Widow's got no right to repeat lies.' Mrs Overton closed her eyes, put her fingers to her temples.

Mrs Titterton made a squeak as if she'd sat on a frog. ‘Everyone knows what you two get up to at that outcrop!'

The farmers and workers standing around murmured and nodded and Mrs Flynn said, ‘Oopsy-daisy.'

‘Mr Titterton only married you for your farm,' continued Lilith.

Henrietta held her mother – she was buckling and gasping for air but she still managed a comeback. ‘You can talk, gold digger. You're a common strumpet.'

‘We are in love!' cried Lilith, and the crowd was silenced.

Mrs Overton calmly lifted her hems, stepped away from the refreshment table and marched towards her son. The crowd shuffled along behind her. Margaret led Maude outside where she leaned forward as much as she could in her stiff corset and retched. Her punch and cream cake splattered the spokes of someone's buggy.

Hadley and Henrietta grabbed an arm each and dragged their mother away, the toes of her shoes leaving two sharp lines in the lanolin-soaked floorboards. The vicar picked up his plate of sandwiches.

The first sprinkle on the iron roof didn't register. People were still stunned in the wake of the spat. Then, from outside, low shouts filtered in. Raindrops crackled across the roof and the shed filled with the smell of wetted dust. As if someone had dropped a tiger among them, people fled to the doors. The rain gathered tempo pushed by a long, slow rumble that rolled up and over the outcrop from the shore and across the plain. The shed started to ring like the inside of a piano. The drops got fatter, pounding in sweeping sheets across the roof, and a breezy chill swelled. Drops slashed against the walls and the noise grew and grew.

‘The grapes,' said Phoeba, and beside her Freckle said, ‘The crops.'

In the doorway to the loading dock, Marius and Guston stood looking out at the water. It was pooling in dry depressions and small rivulets ran in wheel ruts.

Phoeba went from group to group looking for Rudolph. She couldn't find him, then pushed through the swinging gate into the pens behind the shearing stands and down in the far back corner she saw him, leaning in a doorway, one hand on his hip. A lightning flash cracked like a fizzing Catherine wheel and lit him.

She went to him and without even looking his arm reached out and gathered her in. She nestled against him while outside the dry season broke and it ruined everything. Another lightning bolt lit the landscape and they saw the silver figures of men fleeing across the plain, like flickering daguerreotypes.

Outside, under the tree where they had danced, Hadley stood with a gun at his shoulder, aiming at the fleeing backs of the sundowners. At his feet were their bottles of kerosene and their rags. Secretly, he had wanted to capture one of them, just one of them – to drag into the shed in front of the crowd, in front of Phoeba. But the rain had stopped them throwing their flaming bombs. And then, in the flash of silver light, he saw her enclosed in Rudolph Steel's arms. Yes, thought Hadley, the rain had ruined everything.

‘The itinerants were going to set fire to the shed tonight,' said Rudolph. ‘We found matches and newspaper. All that wool grease, it would have exploded like a crisp eucalypt. We could have been burned alive, but Freckle warned us.'

‘What will happen now?'

For a while he said nothing, then he untangled himself from her and walked towards the shed, and Guston. Through the shattering rain she heard him say, ‘There's no future in it now, Phoeba,' and something icy tightened around her hopes. A white finger of lightning reached down and touched the flat plains, electrifying the boiling clouds and bathing the homestead in blue and silver beams.

She stayed watching the violent storm. It was brilliant and pretty and she clung to the feeling of Rudolph, felt a yearning for him, wanted to feel his breath on her hair and her body harnessed by his hard body. So this was passion.

Sunday, February 4, 1894

S
he didn't sleep at all. How much destruction had the rain done? As soon as the room was tinged with light blue she was up and dressing. Aunt Margaret sat bolt upright in her bed. ‘Did anyone see you come?'

‘You're at Mount Hope, Aunt, with me.'

‘Oh,' said Margaret and flopped back.

Her father was in the kitchen, still in his tight suit, its waistcoat open. He kept his eyes on his warming bread. He had aged, overnight, his nose withering like a ripe passionfruit and his eyes opaque. An empty jug of wine and a cup sat on the table.

‘That blasted vicar,' he growled, ‘praying for seasonable weather!'

‘There was no hail,' said Phoeba, her enthusiasm thin.

Her father was not encouraged. ‘We'll lose our feed crop,' he began and sighed, shaking his head. ‘There's no space to take risks when you're just trying to survive.'

They cruised the vineyard, washed green and dripping, and as they walked they rustled raindrops from the flat, rubbery leaves and wriggled the small, hard bunches up and down the rows. They could at least save some of their grapes from being tarnished by the sun, and reduce the risk of mould on the bunches just starting to develop a pasty bloom. Leaves had been stripped and berries ruptured but they would lose only about a third of their fruit.

They could live with that.

Next, they stood in their sodden feed crop. The pungent odour of new compost clogged the air as it heated under the rising sun, and the damp seed heads swished softly, muffled. Phoeba's skirt hung damp and heavy.

‘It'll be shot and sprung by tomorrow,' said Robert. ‘Overton will be lucky to salvage enough for seed grain.'

Mid-morning, the sun rose and faint steam saddened the already water-logged crop. The entire district was like a hothouse.

Phoeba climbed through dull scrub to the outcrop and sat on a washed boulder to study the damage. Around her, clumps of dry grass and bushes bobbed with brown and beige movement – rabbits. Unharvested crops along the foreshore, as far as the looking glass would show her, were marred with great patches of flattened stalks as though a giant had waltzed through them. At Overton, Rudolph and Guston kicked through their sodden crop under a pastel sky. She closed her eyes and shouted to a God she now knew didn't exist – ‘Please don't let them go bust,' – and then went to find Lilith.

Lilith was sitting on the back porch pushing pins into a heart-shaped pincushion.

‘Well?' said Phoeba, her hands on her hips.

‘He'll come,' said Lilith and shoved another pin deep into the cushion. The pinheads formed the initials M&L.

In Maude's room Aunt Margaret and Phoeba watched the shuddering lump in the middle of the double bed. ‘I can never be seen at church again,' she cried. ‘I can't even enjoy a simple drive to Mrs Flynn. The shame …'

‘You're attributing far too much importance to a spat at a country dance, Maude. Now sit up, Phoeba has made you a boiled egg and toast.'

Maude struggled out from under her eiderdown dabbing her tears with the bed sheet. Phoeba placed the tray on her mother's lap.

‘Our reputation is lost forever. But you, Phoeba, are a great comfort to me. I hope you always will be.'

‘You called me a liar yesterday.'

‘And,' said Margaret, ‘you told me she was ungrateful and defiant.'