Summer at Mount Hope (5 page)

‘Was that the new manager at Overton?' asked Lilith and Phoeba stepped closer to the counter to listen.

‘That's him,' said Mrs Flynn, primping the curls at the back of her hair. ‘Handsome chap for a foreigner, if you arst me.'

Mrs Flynn leaned on the counter so her breasts rested on her sun-dried forearms. She had two teeth – the front two – and they were straight and brilliant white. And although she pinned her hair up, fat, red springs always fell and rolled together over her bosom. Behind her the dusty shelves held very few items – a tin of Cadbury's Chocolate, boxes of dried fruits and nuts, dusty tins of biscuits, a few packets of tobacco, some nails, boot polish, a roll of wire, a lampshade, wicks, candles and a good stock of Rawleighs' Liniments. The walls were covered with paintings – Aunt Margaret always left a few when she visited, mainly vases of flowers, seascapes or faded landscapes. Mrs Flynn had hung
For Sail
tags from them that turned slowly in the musty air.

‘Widow Pearson's got a package,' said Mrs Flynn. ‘It could be a new corset. You know them corsets are killing her, slowly. Lack of blood to the head. That's why her hair falls out and she has to wear postiches.'

Lilith handed over a list and Mrs Flynn shovelled dried currants and sultanas, mixed peel, glacé cherries and almonds onto the same scales she used for nails, birdseed and butter. ‘Bit late for Christmas, isn't it?'

‘It's for the ploughing match,' said Lilith, quickly.

Phoeba looked up from her paper. ‘Good grief. A plum cake.' Her mother was making a wedding cake. She would have to put a stop to this.

Freckle pushed aside the curtain that separated the gloomy residence from the shop and dragged a heavy mailbag through. At the front step he stopped, lowered it gently to the ground and then struggled with it towards the siding.

‘I'll take that bag if you like, Freckle,' said Phoeba.

‘I can manage.' But his brow creased with effort and he waited with them, a small boy with a big bag between two triangular girls, wide shoulders with bulging leg-of-mutton arms and tent skirts.

‘We could do with a shelter on this siding,' said Lilith, holding her hat, like an island on her head.

‘Wear a bigger hat.' Freckle rubbed his nose on his sleeve.

‘She'd fold under the weight of it,' laughed Phoeba as the train rolled closer, like a burning house coming at them. It chuffed and thudded, the coaches rolling by in a cloud of smoke and steam. Passengers – workers, men in suits, mothers and children – peered out at the bay.

The mail van squealed to a stop in front of them and an old emaciated man with a crooked back leaned out and took the bag from Freckle, wincing as he swung its weight inside. Gleefully then, he raised the replacement mailbag and as Freckle reached for it he tossed it high into the air. It caught in the frame of the windmill above the stockyard and stayed there, draped over the crossbeam like a decaying possum. Then he slammed his door while Freckle pounded with his fist and yelled, ‘You just wait, you dried up old cowpat.'

‘Really!' huffed Lilith.

‘He started it,' said Freckle. ‘Chucking mailbags into the scrub and knocking me for a six with newspapers.'

A door in the middle of the nearest passenger carriage flew open, a carpetbag landed on the siding and out popped Aunt Margaret. Reed thin, she had facial hair on her upper lip and chin, which was why Robert had named his goat Maggie. As usual, Aunt Margaret was covered carefully by gloves and the dustcoat that her mother had purchased in 1824: she used this outfit to hide her paint-spotted clothes and hands.

‘Yoo-hoo,' she said as if they mightn't have noticed her. A passenger handed her a newspaper-wrapped painting through the window.

‘Good of you to dress up for me, Lilith,' she said, and gave her a paint box to carry.

‘So good to see you,' said Phoeba and kissed her aunt's thin cheek. ‘How are you feeling?'

‘General malaise,' she said happily. ‘But I'm better now.'

In the sulky, the passengers plunged one hand deep into their hats' decorations and with their other held fast to the armrests. Phoeba clicked her tongue, Rocket sprang from a standing start and they shot towards home.

A mile down the railway track the thin, bent mailman stood in front of his wall of boxes, feet apart, rolling with the rocking carriage. He up-ended the Bay View Siding mailbag over his sorting desk and a great chunk of wood fell out. It was a huntsman's nest that Freckle had found, and a hundred brown furry spiders trickled all over the desk and floor like spilled beads.

Maude's tea and scones drew the women to the kitchen table, where Aunt Margaret presented Phoeba with a package. ‘Happy birthday for last week.'

‘I remember the day you were born, Phoeba, as if it was yesterday,' her aunt went on ignoring Lilith. Phoeba unwrapped the parcel, untying the string and unfolding the paper.

‘Did you sell a painting?' asked Maude, wondering where she got the money.

‘I have been saving,' said Aunt Margaret.

‘I'll be nineteen in June,' said Lilith, hopefully.

‘It's perfect,' said Phoeba, holding the new blouse against her cheek. It was white lawn with a bishop's collar and a pretty muslin insert down the front that matched the cuffs on its full-length sleeves. It smelled like the hosiery and lace department of a city shop. ‘I'll wear it to the harvest dance,' said Phoeba – it was too fancy for the ploughing match. She folded it very neatly and carefully rewrapped it.

‘You'll look very special for Hadley,' said Lilith, sarcastically. ‘You know, Aunt Margaret, Hadley asked her to marry him and we think she said no!'

‘Pipe down, Lilith,' sang her mother. ‘There's plenty of time yet.'

‘Well, it's not as if the area is rich with suitors.'

Phoeba had an overwhelming desire to stab her little sister but instead she said simply, ‘Lilith's jealous because I got a gift.' She would deal with letting her mother down – and put a stop to the wedding cake – later.

‘Now listen carefully,' said Aunt Margaret, ‘I have news.' She threw two pamphlets onto the kitchen table; ‘I have found the perfect solution for my poverty. I will sell the house and move to an artists' commune!'

Anticipating the reaction, Phoeba reached for her mother, who gulped her tea, her eyes watering as the hot fluid burned her throat. ‘A what?'

Lilith was frozen, her teacup poised. ‘You're not serious?'

‘It's a very reasonable set-up actually,' continued Aunt Margaret. ‘You pay a deposit and the dividends are invested—'

‘In what?' asked Phoeba, now slightly alarmed herself. Banks were crashing at the rate of one a week. People were desperately trying to offload huge wads of pound notes for gold. There were strikes in every city and droughts and floods all over the country.

Aunt Margaret flapped her arms defiantly as if she was beating off small enemies, ‘My favorite brother-in-law, Robert, can see to all that. There are dividends, from somewhere, and they pay for upkeep of the property!' Her eyes were gleaming and she was getting into her stride. ‘I have to cook and—'

‘You have never cooked a thing in your life!' cried Maude.

‘—and I can stay until I die, unless I go mad, of course, and go to an asylum.'

Apart from the possibility of an asylum, thought Phoeba, it was a brilliant idea. Her aunt would paint side by side with other artists at their easels under gum trees resting with bright pallets on their forearms. There would be bohemians sharing picnic lunches with lyrebirds wandering peacefully on a dilapidated mansion lawn.

‘Is it at Heidelberg?' she asked.

‘Not the Impressionists,' said her aunt as if she was saying Leprosy. ‘Realists and naturalists—'

‘Lord save you, Margaret!' screamed Maude fanning her reddening face. ‘A naturalist camp is no place for a respectable woman!'

‘It is communal living, Maude. I will not be cavorting naked with nature,' explained Aunt Margaret, soothingly. ‘The place is called Esperance and it's in Fairfield, by the river!'

‘You have lost your senses,' sniffed Lilith.

‘I am too old to go on starving, freezing in winter and frying in summer.' She shoved a second scone into her mouth defiantly leaving flour on her moustache.

‘I think it's a good idea,' declared Phoeba.

Her mother regarded her as she would a traitor and snarled, ‘Yes, but you would Phoeba.' She turned her attention to jam making.

Robert arrived and sat in the corner, his newspaper folded in his lap:
CRAZED SUFFRAGETTES STORM WELFARE OFFICE
. Aunt Margaret continued on about her potential new life. She had made an appointment to see the place the following Monday and Phoeba made a list of things she should make note of – amenities? And was there hot water? And what sort of food? And what if she decided she wanted to move out? Robert's only contribution was to tell her not to sign anything.

Finally Maude plonked down at the kitchen table and declared, ‘I won't sell my parents' home so you can live like a … trull.'

‘Mother!' gasped Phoeba.

‘How dare you!' cried Aunt Margaret. ‘After all, I'm not the one in this family who traded herself for creature comforts.'

Robert calmly put on his pith helmet, gathered up the newspapers and went to his cellar.

‘It's her life,' said Phoeba. ‘She should be able to do as she pleases.'

‘You wouldn't like it if we sold your home!' cried her mother.

‘But,' said Phoeba, ‘isn't home here with us now?'

‘It isn't right,' replied Maude.

‘It might be right for Aunt Margaret,' said Phoeba.

‘And anyway,' said Margaret, ‘I can always burn the house down and sell the land. So you may as well sign.'

‘We'll have nowhere to stay in Geelong,' moaned Lilith.

‘Lilith Crupp!' said Aunt Margaret, slapping the table, ‘the only time you ever stayed with me you told tales. You told your mother my house was a mess and that I only fed you sandwiches.'

‘It was neglect,' said Maude.

‘I stuck the letter you wrote me to the front door as a warning to any other visitors.'

‘I suppose you'll keep all the proceeds for yourself,' said Lilith.

‘Mother already has a home, an income and a family,' said Phoeba, and dropped a teaspoon of boiling liquid plums onto a saucer.

‘I don't care about the money,' wept Maude, ‘but it's the only thing we have left of Mother and Dad.'

‘Rubbish, Maude, you have the crockery set, the furniture—'

‘Actually,' said Maude, suddenly lucid, ‘I would like Mother's sewing machine so that way the girls can at least sew clothes for themselves since no one will marry relatives of a naturalist.'

‘I hate sewing,' mumbled Phoeba, tilting the saucer.

Lilith said that Aunt Margaret simply should have married.

‘And she could have married Archibald Treadery,' added Maude, ‘but she rebuffed him, poor chap.' She fanned her red throat furiously with a pamphlet.

‘I didn't love him.'

‘Nonsense, he was a bank manager.'

‘You can have the shed when Phoeba gets married,' offered Lilith.

‘I'd eat cab-horse stew before I'd move to this wilderness.'

‘You might have to,' said Phoeba, watching the skin crinkle on the cooling dob of stewed plums. ‘The jam is cooked.'

Aunt Margaret drank too much of Robert's wine at tea and at bedtime she stripped off, flung her clothes into the corner and crawled under the mosquito net in her drawers and chemise. She looked over at the book Phoeba was reading. ‘You won't like the ending of that story.'

‘Why not?'

‘Bathsheba abandons her self-reliance and marries for love; that marriage ends badly so she takes on the worthy character – the reliable sturdy one – presumably to be content for ever after.'

‘Would you have married the bank manager if you'd loved him?'

‘Oh yes. If I'd even liked him – but he was truly awful. I'm perfectly happy unloved and free to do as I please.'

‘Providing you can afford it.'

Margaret sighed. ‘People assume there's something wrong with spinsters, that we're missing out. But how can you miss something you never had?' She took a small, silver flask from her purse and drank, wiping her mouth with the back of her hand and checking the net around her for mosquitoes. ‘In these modern times girls don't have to marry,' she said.

Aunt Margaret was right, Phoeba supposed, but Aunt Margaret's freedom to do as she pleased depended on her being able to join the family at Mount Hope at the slightest excuse. Phoeba thought of Hadley's expectant eyes, of Hadley rubbing his forehead when things looked complicated, uncertain … when someone said no.

‘Anyway,' said Aunt Margaret, ‘Lilith will snare a husband, there's nothing more certain. She'd sell her mother for sixpence if it meant she could have a new hat. Remember the dolly?'

Who could forget the dolly? Little Fanny, Aunt Margaret's neighbour, who used to play with Lilith and Phoeba when they visited, was sent to the corner shop for milk one day. She never came back. Gypsies, they said, or blackfellas. But when Lilith heard Fanny had gone all she did was race next door to ask if she could have Fanny's black doll.

‘She has her eye on Marius Overton,' said Phoeba, an image of the handsome manager at Overton, rather than its owner, flashing through her mind.

‘Marius Overton, my, my,' said Margaret raising her flask. ‘I bet you sixpence she gets him.'

‘Either him or the new manager,' said Phoeba. ‘What happened to your bank manager, Aunt?'

‘He died,' said Margaret. ‘Diphtheria. If I didn't die in childbirth I would have been a widow by now, possibly with a nice stipend.'