The Noon Lady of Towitta (19 page)

‘What we heard was that your father rode back from Eden Valley to your farm that night to do you both in, except you struggled free and managed to raise the alarm.'

‘And that's what everyone believes, Sister?'

‘Oh, Mary, yes, didn't you know? And then for all these years, out of fear for your own life, you have protected your brutal father. Why you never revealed this ghastly secret, I really can't understand. After all, if you had spoken out he would have been convicted and most likely hanged.'

‘I don't mind if that's what people believe, Sister. After all, Father ruled us with an iron fist. But I think you should know, Sister, that it is not possible for anyone to ride over those hills and back to Eden Valley through the night. And further, if Father had done it, I for one would never have protected him. I would gladly have let him hang.'

‘Really, Mary? Then what are you saying? If it wasn't your father, are you saying that it was the intruder after all, as you have always insisted?'

‘Not at all. There was no intruder other than the ones in my nightmares. I'll tell you the real story for I really do need to get this matter off my chest once and for all. I feel I have so little time left.'

Sister Kathleen didn't answer but looked to me to tell her what really happened. But I was now too tired to continue.

‘I am near the end of my story, Sister, but the next part is long and needs to be told in one sitting, if you know what I mean. Perhaps the next time you come, you might be able to stop for longer than usual. I promise it will be the last instalment. It has to be, Sister, for I can feel my days are few.'

‘I will come in three days' time then. I am on an early shift that ends about lunchtime. I don't have to dash home but could spend some of the afternoon with you to finish this.'

27

3 July 1919

It was early afternoon three days later, as she had promised, when Sister Kathleen returned with a basket full of tasty things to eat and drink. ‘It's sunny but cold,' she said, ‘so let's go and make ourselves comfortable on the enclosed verandah.' She helped me along the corridor toward the long verandah enclosed at one end and settled me comfortably among rugs and cushions brought from my bedroom.

‘Are you ready for this, Mary? You really don't have to continue, you know, as I know the story now.'

‘I don't think you do, Sister,' I said, and she looked at me puzzled. And so began the last part of my story.

I was a daydreamer. But at night I had nightmares, or as I called them, night terrors, that were so frightening I dreaded going to bed. After Bertha was killed my nightmares became worse. But Father's death brought release, the nightmares ceased altogether. It brought peace but also new problems for me. After his death I was able to think more clearly about what had happened the night Bertha died because I didn't have the nightmares to upset my thoughts. The nightmares I had endured were so horrific that they interfered with what I thought was true and what was not. I know you can't imagine how life can be so warped by nightmares if you've never had them, but it was only when they ceased that I could sort out what actually happened to me on that night all those years ago. And the more I was able to think of the events on that night, the more shocked I became. I felt the need to talk about it but there was no one I could share my fears with. Then I met you, Sister. So long after the event I don't think many other people would care about what I have to say.

In the weeks leading up to Bertha's death our family was not managing at all well. Mother and Father had been invited by Mother's family in Eden Valley to spend some days with them immediately after Christmas. They weren't keen to go as they had so little in the way of gifts and food to take with them, but Mother's brother had insisted. To lessen the number of extra mouths turning up to be fed Father had insisted that he and Mother would go on their own. The four of us, Willy, August, Bertha and me, would stay behind to run the farm. It was a way of saving face with the rest of the family.

As you can imagine we were bitterly upset about this turn of events. We knew our aunt, uncle and cousins were always happy to see us all. And of course we were looking forward to seeing them. We knew that had we gone we would just share whatever we had, because that's what we had done in the past. We had always managed to make a few provisions stretch a long way, a bit like the sharing of the loaves and fishes, which made us feel hearty and full of goodwill. But it was not to be that year, for we were so poor. It was the first time we missed this much-anticipated family event. But for Father's pride, Bertha would still be alive.

Families generally only came together at Christmas. Now there was nothing to look forward to. Even the prospect of seeing Gustave did not fill me with excitement since he had started making excuses about us not going to Adelaide. To add to the general situation I was feeling unwell over Christmas. It was exceptionally hot with temperatures well over a hundred degrees. The heat, disappointment at not spending Christmas with Mother's family, my consumption and the uncertainty of Gustave's affections for me all contributed to my lethargy and misery.

There was the added disappointment of not being allowed to attend the annual New Year's Eve dance at the Sedan Institute as Mother and Father could not provide a chaperone. Gustave, who may have been considered, was in Adelaide. The stinging attacks on me by both brothers and Bertha because I would not defy our parents' orders did not help my mood. To be twenty-four and left in charge of the farm, yet not be allowed to take them to the dance, was the last straw. I could see bad feeling in the days ahead.

Bertha made a real scene in the afternoon before the dance and throughout the following day. She would not let it rest. Perhaps she had told a young man that she'd meet him there. She was making threats and making a nuisance of herself and by the time she went to bed that evening, I was at the end of my tether.

Before Mother and Father left we ate a miserable Christmas lunch of scraggy roast mutton and a soggy steam pudding. Father made it clear that this year we could not afford to make the usual festival cakes and biscuits and other Christmas trimmings, and we didn't bother with a Christmas tree. There were no treats on Christmas Day and Willy, August and Bertha were bitterly disappointed. After all they were only children.

The boys had helped me catch and slay two sheep for the festivities, mean, skinny animals. When we caught them the boys pretended to have difficulty holding the animals down, so the animals struggled and got free several times before I was able to hold them still enough to slit their throats. I did it in rage and the blood sprayed the clothes I intended wearing for the few days over Christmas. I made no effort to spruce myself up for the occasion as I was past caring.

As soon as Mother and Father departed the boys disappeared with their guns and Bertha hung around like a blowfly and pestered me. ‘Mary, why can't we go to the dance? Everyone we know will be there. It's not fair. Mother and Father will never know and we'll behave ourselves.'

‘I keep telling you, Father says we can't go and that's the end of it. Stop your silliness. Someone will tell on us if we go, you can be certain of that. Besides, it is not proper for us to come back in the dark without a chaperone. What would people think? You know how they talk about the most trivial of things.'

‘But, Gustave could take us. What's wrong with that?'

‘You know that can't be. He'll be in Adelaide then and anyway I can't be seen to be going home with him unless we are officially engaged. People would talk about it being improper.'

She smirked, ‘Well it is really, isn't it?'

‘Whatever do you mean, young miss?'

‘It's what you and he do in the barn, or even in Towitta Creek. I've seen you.'

I was outraged, ‘Now look here, he and I are going to get married one day and we're sort of engaged.'

‘So when you're engaged you can do all that kissing and cuddling and those things that parents do? What would Mother and Father think if I told them?'

‘You just dare, Bertha. When you're grown up, you'll know this is what engaged couples like to do. Now be off with yourself. Go and play with the Henke girls for a while. I know Ella and Violet are expecting you to go and see them today. Go and see what Christmas was like for them. They may even give you a present.'

‘You only want me to go because Gustave's coming this afternoon, like he did yesterday.'

‘So what? I don't want you about while he's here, we have important things to discuss. Just go away and leave me in peace.'

Bertha wore me out with her banter and my mood was not improved when Gustave arrived that Sunday afternoon. He followed me around while I did jobs around the farm. He pleaded with me to stop working and pay more attention to him. I declared I would not stop until the chores were done or until he had given me a date for our betrothal. He was still there in the evening when Bertha was around to hear what was said. The more I pleaded with him to name a date, the more he made excuses as to why he wouldn't do so until he returned from Adelaide in the following week. I rejected his amorous advances but he wouldn't be deterred and before I knew it, I lost myself to his sweet caresses. And he promised to name our betrothal date when he returned from Adelaide. Then he was gone and I was left with my siblings in utter misery.

New Year's Eve came and went and the sour moods continued into the next day, the first day of the new year. That night Bertha went to bed in a huff and hid under the bedclothes. Half an hour after Bertha flounced off to bed, I was just about to go when Willy and August came home. I waited until they had eaten their tea and cake and let them take the only working lamp to their room in the barn. I still felt under the weather and was exhausted from the strain of being in charge and I longed for an early night. Unusually there wasn't even a breeze that night and the silence and pre-moon blackness were eerie. The candles had burned down to stumps, we had planned to make a stack of new ones when Mother and Father returned. In the meantime we had to make do with just the one lamp the brothers took with them.

After the boys left with the lamp, I tried to make amends to Bertha by announcing that it was time for a fairytale in the pitch dark. It could be a cautionary tale, the story of what could happen to those who don't behave. The message to Bertha concerned the trouble that would come her way if she continued to flirt with the boys, especially my sweetheart Gustave. It was also a way for me to let off steam about Father. The stories of Sneewittchen (Snow White) and Aschenputtel (Cinderella) were oft-told ones but I could make them more frightening than most people. That night, impatient and irritated with Bertha, I frightened her with ‘How children play butcher', which we often acted out.

The tale was about two children playing together. One pretended to be the butcher and the other one the pig. In the story, the brother playing the butcher was so carried away that he picked up his father's knife lying near the woodpile and grabbed hold of his younger brother. Pulling his head back by his hair, he slit his throat from ear to ear. His mother looked out the window at that moment and saw the little brother twitching and bleeding as he lay dying.

Horrified at what she saw, she ran from the house leaving her toddler daughter in a tin bath. Taking the knife from her son she stabbed him, leaving the two dead sons as she returned to the house to find her little girl had drowned. Full of remorse that her three young children were dead, she grabbed a rope from the woodshed and hanged herself. When her husband came home from hunting and found his entire family gone, he was so distraught that he shot himself dead.

We always worked ourselves to fever pitch as we acted out this grim story and that is how we were on the night I terrified Bertha with the knife, intending to act out the butcher's role. At first she was keen for, like the rest of us, she enjoyed a creepy bedtime story, but then in the total darkness and in my sour and miserable state I became carried away, and she fled back to her bed startled. When I realised what was happening I went outside to recover. I was frightened that what little sisterly affection I may have felt for Bertha had vanished and that I actually wanted to kill her. I sat outside to calm my breathing, listening to the crickets and waiting for the murderous mood to pass. It took some time but then, thinking I had recovered, I went back inside to prepare myself for bed. I had removed my skirt and blouse and climbed into bed and was almost asleep when Bertha blurted out, ‘I've got a secret, Mary. A secret concerning your sweetheart, Gustave.'

She had been as cross with me over the Christmas period as I was with her and probably now, more so, because I'd frightened her. I had grown weary of her insolence of the last two days and I realised now that I hadn't recovered at all from my murderous mood. I shouted into her face, ‘What are you saying?'

‘Well, you won't sit on the sofa and spoon with Gustave anymore. I heard from Mrs Matschoss today that you no longer have a sweetheart. So, you'll just have to make do with me now.'

‘What are you talking about, what have you heard?'

‘I can't tell you more, it's supposed to be a secret and I'll get into trouble if I tell you. Anyway, I don't want to say more. You've scared me so much that I never want to hear your horrid butcher stories again. And that's what you are, a butcher!'

I couldn't see her but I leaned over the bed and grabbed hard at her hair and said, ‘You'd better tell me what you've heard about Gustave, Bertha, or I will truly hurt you.'

‘No,' she protested, ‘I won't. You're scaring me.' I pulled harder.

‘All right,' she screamed, ‘let go and I'll tell you.' She took a breath, ‘Mrs Matschoss told me this afternoon that Gustave has had a fiancée for months, but they aren't telling anyone until she turns eighteen at her next birthday. When they've told her father, they'll get married later this year. So you see, he can't marry you too, can he? He can't really be your sweetheart if he's already promised to marry someone else. And you'll never guess who it is?'