Dorothy Eden (18 page)

‘Must you? Why not let the fellow off with what he’s already had?’

‘You don’t understand, Phil. I can’t risk losing my authority. If I did I could have my throat cut or my house set on fire at any time. Even the quietest of these species isn’t to be trusted. They’ve had too long brooding over their supposed wrongs. But I won’t be long. Then we’ll drink to my son.’

An hour later Eugenia gave up the attempt to sleep. She rang the bell at her bedside. It was answered by Mrs Jarvis.

‘Can I get you something, ma’am?’

‘Why aren’t you in the kitchen? Why didn’t Jane answer the bell?’

‘I took the liberty of sitting in the linen room, ma’am. I didn’t think anyone else would hear if you rang, with all the noise the gentlemen are making.’

‘What are they doing downstairs?’

‘The master has been opening some of his wine. He says everyone must drink to his son. Even Jane and Phoebe and Ellen and I had to go in and take a glass of wine. Now all the ladies have retired and the gentlemen are having a last bottle. You can’t deny them their pleasure, ma’am.’

Another loud burst of laughter echoed through the house. A voice began to declaim. Someone tapped out a one finger melody on the piano in accompaniment. There was a crash of breaking glass.

Eugenia said in a matter-of-fact voice, ‘But no one will flog them for being drunk.’

‘That’s a different matter altogether.’ Mrs Jarvis moved about quietly, turning up the lamp, straightening the bedclothes, then shaking a white powder into a glass and mixing it with water. She looked a little like Sarah, Eugenia thought. She had the same quiet movements. This realization produced an intimacy that made her say, ‘Was your husband pleased when he knew you were going to have a child?’

There was a little silence. Then, ‘He never knew. I hadn’t told him.’

‘Oh! But why?’

‘It seemed just another thing to put on his shoulders.’ Mrs Jarvis stirred the cloudy mixture in the glass. ‘I would have told him in time.’

‘Would he have wanted a boy?’

‘I expect he would have. All men do. It must be their vanity. They want to reproduce themselves. Aren’t you pleased that Mr Massing-ham wants a boy? I have no one to care what I have. A child bred by convicts.’

The lateness, Eugenia’s weakness, the intimacy of the lamplit bedroom, had made them neither mistress nor maid, but two women in an elemental situation.

‘I didn’t know you had this bitterness,’ Eugenia said in surprise.

‘I try to overcome it.’

The two women’s eyes met. Something passed between them, something Eugenia was too tired and too imperceptive to analyse. She only knew that it was significant. Their lives were becoming tied together, she thought, and couldn’t decide whether this was a good or a bad thing. It simply seemed to be inevitable, though why that should be so she also could not answer.

And all at once Mrs Jarvis, as if she too recognized the precarious situation, was back to being a servant.

She held out the glass.

‘Drink this, ma’am. It’s a sleeping powder Doctor Noakes said I was to give you if you were wakeful. In five minutes you’ll be sound asleep and not hear another thing.’

Half an hour later Molly Jarvis tiptoed back into the room to see if her mistress slept, and stood for several minutes looking at the face on the pillow, the long lashes quiet on the pale cheeks, the tension gone from the too sensitive mouth.

She was a delicate-looking creature. How would she come through her ordeal ? She might have had a soft marriage bed, but her childbed would be exactly the same as any other woman’s. Perhaps harder because she was so finely made, so narrow.

Molly ran her hands down her own strong shapely hips. She had felt her baby move today for the first time. It had given her a moment of exultant pleasure. Bred of convicts, or not, she intended to make a good life for her child, here at Yarrabee.

When she went downstairs the men were preparing to retire. She walked quickly past the open door of the drawing-room, hoping to be unobserved.

But as she went down the passage to cross the courtyard to her own quarters she bumped into a tall figure just coming in out of the darkness. Hands clutched at her. Lips pressed briefly on hers. She heard the master’s laugh as he blundered on, pleased with his snatched kiss from whoever it was, but intent only on getting safely upstairs to fall into bed beside his wife.

Molly stood still, tears abruptly streaming down her cheeks.

She hadn’t cried—since when? And why now because of something so unimportant as a snatched anonymous kiss?

The answer to that was simple enough—because Gilbert Massingham would never remember it, and she, as her surging blood told her, would never forget it.

‘So here I am and here I must stay,’ Eugenia wrote to Sarah a few days later. She was referring to the fact that she was still confined to the sofa in the drawing-room. Her words, however, had an underlying meaning that Sarah, who was extremely perceptive, might guess at. Here she was in the country to which she had come of her own free will, so in spite of its many painful aspects and her too frequent homesickness, she must make the best of it.

She stopped biting her pen, and went on,

‘I am utterly delighted about the baby and so is Gilbert—he comes to me with a twinkle in his eye saying “Give Papa a kiss.” The doctor has ordered bed in the mornings and the drawing-room sofa in the afternoons for the next two or three weeks, then all will be well. I believe our guests enjoyed their visit, in spite of having such an inactive hostess. They all left on Tuesday morning, but Gilbert has invited Mrs Ashburton to come back and stay at Yarrabee while her son is absent on his proposed exploration of the interior. He seems to have developed quite a partiality for that garrulous woman, and he also thinks that I require vivacious company in my condition. As if constantly searching for Mrs Ashburton’s lost belongings and listening to her chatter is going to keep me in good spirits!

‘It is almost winter and the days are getting short. Gilbert is very busy clearing more land for vines, digging and trenching and planting windbreaks. There is also the constant problem of keeping our unique brand of labourers working honestly. A penal colony is not a happy place, and I often spend useless time wishing that this condition did not exist. But I must not go on like this. Gilbert does not like me to talk politics…’

B
Y MID-WINTER MRS ASHBURTON
had settled in. She had brought so many trunks that it looked as if she never intended to leave.

Yarrabee was a haven compared to the noise and bustle of Sydney. It had been a mistake to join her son in Australia. An old woman needed peace and quiet. If Godfrey were to find gold in the interior, or there were other pleasant aspects to keep him there, she would stay exactly where she was.

She settled more comfortably in her chair, a plump hen spreading her feathers over a secure and cosy nest.

‘At least I promise to stay until your baby is born.’

It was the conditions on the
Caroline
all over again, the round figure in the flying shawls trundling after Eugenia, the complaining voice forever saying, ‘Wait for me, my dear! Why are you in such a hurry? Do you want to be alone? Is that why you shut the door? But being too much alone isn’t good for you in your condition. That’s what your mother would say. Since you haven’t her here, I will take her place.’ Or, ‘Really, Eugenia, I can’t think why you keep that surly Peabody. He simply grunts in the most unmannerly way when I give him advice. As for Jane, you haven’t succeeded in improving her in the very least. And I also think you give that housekeeper of yours too much liberty. You have to remember she was a convict. Are that kind ever to be trusted? And how is she to do her work when she has her baby?’

The monologue went on and on until Eugenia lost her temper.

‘This is my house and my servants, Mrs Ashburton. If you find it so disagreeable, you are perfectly free to leave.’

The old lady’s bosom rose and fell in supreme indignation. But canniness fought with her outrage. She had the grace to say,

‘I apologize, my dear. I am a nasty interfering old woman. You must always tell me when I behave badly. I love you and Gilbert, you know. I think of you as my children.’

‘And behave like a mother-in-law,’ Eugenia said. ‘But I suppose there is sometimes a pleasant lovable mother-in-law.’

‘You do not find me one?’

‘Oh, you silly creature! My husband does, if that is a comfort to you. But he doesn’t have to listen all day to your criticisms.’

Mrs Ashburton nodded meekly. ‘You are perfectly right, Eugenia. I am glad we have had this talk. Now, when I feel impelled to make a critical remark, I will button my lips together. You will see.’

Eugenia was fairly certain she would see nothing of the kind. But she did have an affection for the irritating old lady, and it was true that Gilbert was fond of her, or said that he was.

So the weeks wore on, filled with quiet occupations. Sewing baby clothes, writing the long weekly letter to Sarah, supervising Peabody as he dug borders, and planned the garden that was to burgeon into life in the spring, going for walks, attending church on Sunday, and visiting Mrs Bourke, the wife of the new Governor, Major Bourke. They had only recently arrived, replacing Governor Darling. Mrs Bourke had taken a great liking to Eugenia and enjoyed inviting her to an informal tea party. In the evenings Mrs Ashburton and Gilbert talked and she listened dreamily. There was no need to search for subjects of conversation now that Mrs Ashburton was there with her unending chatter. But there was also the drawback that the opportunity in the long winter evenings to get to know her husband more intimately had to be postponed.

Their only private conversations took place in their bedroom, and by that time Eugenia was struggling with her familiar inhibitions, although that old haunting nightmare was less vivid and Gilbert had become very thoughtful of her now that she was pregnant. He was afraid of harming the baby.

Then it was spring and the night of the big frost.

A severe late frost was one of the hazards of vine cultivation. Since he had established his vineyard, Gilbert had had only once before to fight a frost. That one had not been too severe, and by lighting enough fires he had managed to save most of his vines.

It was the French theory that plenty of smoke coated the vines and rendered them immune to frost. In those early days Gilbert had had only brush and straw, with green leaves and rubble piled on top, to make a smoky fire.

Now he was much better equipped, with hundreds of frost pots filled with crude oil. It was a precaution he had taken as soon as he had enough acres under cultivation, and when he knew that the devastation of a year’s crop would mean ruin. This was the factor about which shrewd men like Wentworth and Lachlan Macquarie, a former Governor, had warned him. A flock of sheep would have provided an insurance against bankruptcy.

But Gilbert Massingham was a stubborn man who seldom listened to advice. There was a danger of his brain being pickled by his wine, people said, for he could think of nothing else. He would not contemplate large flocks of sheep running on his acres. He intended to have one enormous vineyard, and surely it would be bad luck if all the grapes failed in one year.

So he took what practical precautions he could, and prayed in church on Sundays for mild nights in winter, not too much rain, which would mean mildew, in spring, and a complete absence of hailstorms.

Hope and prayer and a great deal of vigilance. It was a tense exciting life exactly suited to his nature.

All the winter he was on the alert for frosts. The slightest increase in cold, and he was sitting up in bed, his sensitive nose sniffing the atmosphere. He frequently rose in the middle of the night and dressed and went to walk round the vineyard, testing the stillness of the air and studying the sparkling stars. His wife was carrying their child, but this sprawling area of young vines was his own personal child, being gently nursed and watched over until maturity.

The night of disaster began innocently enough. At ten o’clock Gilbert looked outdoors. A slight wind and clouds trailing across the moon reassured him. It would be no colder than usual. He could go to bed with an easy mind.

It was three in the morning when Tom Sloan aroused him by throwing pebbles at the window.

‘Mr Massingham, sir,’ he whispered hoarsely, as Gilbert put his head out of the window, ‘it’s freezing hard. Shall I light the pots?’

Rime glittered on the window sill. The frosty air bit into Gilbert’s face. The moon was polished gold in an absolutely clear frozen sky.

Eugenia stirred in alarm.

‘What is it?’

‘Frost.’

‘Oh, is that all?’

Dragging on his trousers, Gilbert had time to say, with an edge to his voice, ‘It’s enough. Go back to sleep.’

‘I thought it might be trouble with the convicts.’ The alarm had left her voice. She asked sleepily, ‘Is there anything I can do?’

‘What could you do? Run up and down the furrows with tar pots? This is a man’s job.’

Gilbert finished dressing in the moonlit darkness, and was gone. Eugenia curled up in the warm bed, relief flowing through her as the shadow receded. No desperate fugitive tonight, no fear of bloodshed, no haunted betrayed eyes. She could sleep.

So she didn’t see the dozens of moving lights, like jack-o’-lanterns, as the men, roused from sleep, carried the flaming smoking frost pots up and down, letting the tarry smoke pour over the young vines. They were soon black from head to foot themselves, and half choked with smoke. Towards dawn they became so weary that one of them stumbled and dropped his pot. In a flash the master was standing over him, cursing him, but before he could gather up the sticky still-flaming receptacle someone else snatched it up. A woman in skirts.

‘I’ll take a turn,’ said Mrs Jarvis.

‘What are you doing out here?’

Gilbert’s voice was hard with tension and weariness.

It was the last straw that he should have to allow a woman so far gone in pregnancy to help to save his vines.