Authors: Coral Atkinson
Geoffrey sat on a pile of spare timber, took his penknife from his pocket and sliced open the tomato. The sphere divided like parts of an ornate casket. He picked a segment and put it in his mouth. Warm from the sun, succulent and sweet, it tasted of perfection. Geoffrey looked out the slightly clouded windows of the glasshouse at the shrubbery and well-maintained lawns that stretched to the house. In the distance he could see the mountains, white as well-rinsed porcelain. There are times like this, he thought, when a man ought to be happy. But he wasn’t. Geoffrey thought of how it would be when he went back indoors. Wharenui’s interior, its woody breath, the glass door throwing blisters of light on the floor at the end of the hall, and empty silence. It was an elaborate kennel to crawl into; there was no joy there.
Geoffrey thought of Huia and felt the familiar fury. Not the bright, bile-filled rage of the early days but a deeper, dull anger at being tied to this woman; shackled, he liked to think. He could eventually get a divorce — ample grounds, of course — but he had no stomach for the church’s condemnation or the scandal, and what was the point, when no respectable woman would ever consider marriage to a divorced man? Huia’s desertion had condemned him to a life of limbo, neither bachelor nor married man. Hope she breaks her bloody neck, he said to himself.
And then there was Sybil, living on that godforsaken sheep run in the high country, trying to instil some learning into two
sons of the soil. Geoffrey wondered yet again why she did it. What madness or masochism forced her to hide herself away like that? Sybil wrote that she had become a teetotaller, joining some women’s temperance organisation as a postal member. The idea of Sybil, always so sparing with alcohol anyway, earnestly forswearing the demon drink seemed amusing and endearing. Maybe it was out of solidarity with him; Geoffrey didn’t know. Sybil was the only person he had ever told of the temptation that alcohol offered, the pathetic battles of will he fought every time he passed an open public house door, or was offered a tot of whisky or a social glass of port. Geoffrey believed Sybil knew him better than anyone; even better, perhaps, than Vanessa. She saw him as he really was — or was it that in her benevolent vision he became what he most wanted to be?
Geoffrey ate more of the tomato. He had read that the forbidden fruit of the Garden of Eden was never specified. It could have been a tomato as much as an apple. He imagined a human hand stretching forward. The innocent gesture of need that unleashes the unknown. He himself had done it with Huia. And he thought of the way judgement had descended and the gate closed.
T
he men from Lochinvar had been mustering three days when the wind turned southerly and the weather changed. By smoko that afternoon the sky was lavender; within two hours, rain and sleet were falling. Sybil, who was mending a ripped petticoat in her bedroom, got up and lit the lamp.
‘April weather can be a real blackguard,’ Freddie Powell had said to her the morning he had left with his sons and the musterers. ‘No guarantee that just because it’s like summer now it won’t turn to custard while we’re up there, and we’ll be
snow-raking
sheep out rather than driving them.’
‘Looks as if he might be right, poor man,’ said Sybil to herself.
Later, waking in the night, she opened the curtains and the blinds. Snow had fallen heavily and the land lay piercingly white under the moon. The hills and mountains, pale elbows and shoulders, leaned forward towards the Lochinvar buildings. The sky above was spiked by myriad stars.
Sybil wished Geoffrey were there, sharing the pleasure and recording it with his camera. Sybil sighed, as she always did when she thought of Geoffrey. After several years away she still wrote to him, thought of him, prayed for him, but the spark had been lost. He was there, she was here. He was married, she was
not. Maybe, Sybil thought, I am not destined for happiness. She was approaching forty, long past the age of marriage. Soon she would even be too old to have children. Maybe she was doomed to die a virgin. Sybil thought of something she’d overheard one of the hired hands saying to a mate:
‘That’s the governess, Miss Percival. Reckon she’ll be one of them with “returned unopened” written on her tombstone.’ Crude and cruel: she fingered the remark like a sore.
Sybil realised she was shivering. The fire was almost out and the room cold. She was considering whether she would bother trying to revive the fire or get quickly back into bed when there was a scurry of footsteps and a knock on the bedroom door. It was Ivy Cowper, Mrs Powell’s maid.
‘I thought I heard you up,’ the girl said, the candle she carried trembling in her hand. ‘Can you come quick? The mistress is really crook. She’s not been well since yesterday and now she’s all hot and cold and saying there are monkeys in the curtains and a turkey under her bed.’
Sybil threw her tweed walking jacket over her nightdress and followed Ivy down the corridor to the other end of the house. Mrs Powell, coughing violently, was lying half out of the bed, feebly swinging a large gig umbrella across the floor. When the coughing grew more intense she fell back in the bed, clutching her chest. ‘Turkeys,’ Mrs Powell said faintly, repeating the word between coughing bouts.
In the lamplight Sybil could see that the woman’s face was very flushed. ‘It’s all right, Mrs Powell,’ she said, coming to the bed, ‘there are no turkeys. You’re ill. Just let me feel your head and we’ll see what we can do to make you better.’
Mrs Powell let the umbrella drop as Sybil put her hand on the sick woman’s forehead. ‘Crème de menthe,’ said Mrs Powell. ‘We always had that. They were such lovely parties.’
‘She’s delirious,’ said Sybil. ‘Got a very high fever from the
looks of things. Could be pneumonia. We need to sponge her to get the fever down. You do that while I arrange for someone to go and get word to Dr Robinson to come up.’
‘In the snow?’ said Ivy.
‘Someone will have to,’ said Sybil.
‘But there’s no one here — only you and us maids and the Jacksons. Everyone else is out on the muster.’
‘Jackson will have to go, if he’s the only man left,’ said Sybil.
Snow fell into the pantry as Sybil opened the back door and stepped outside. She was now fully dressed and wearing an oilskin coat she had found in the hall. But even that failed to protect her from the knife-like sharpness of the air. The Jacksons lived in the married couple’s cob cottage, which had been the original Lochinvar homestead when the run was first worked in the early sixties. A small, unpaved yard lay between the two buildings. The distance, though slight, was difficult to negotiate in the snowy darkness. Sybil caught her skirt on a garden sieve that was lying under the snow and fell against the side of the wheelbarrow; she righted herself and had gone only a few feet when she stumbled on one of Denis’s hobnailed boots that he had left in the yard.
The noise alerted the pig dogs and they began barking loudly in their runs. The window of the cottage opened and Jackson looked out. ‘Shut bloody up!’ he shouted. The dogs continued to bark. Jackson disappeared from the window for a moment and returned with a rifle, which he leaned across the sill. ‘Shut up or I’ll blow your balls off!’
‘Mr Jackson!’ said Sybil, stumbling towards the house.
The door of the cottage opened and Mrs Jackson appeared in a nightdress with her hair in curlpapers, a candle in her hand. ‘Put the gun down, Bobs. It’s the governess. What do you want?’ she said to Sybil.
‘It’s Mrs Powell,’ said Sybil. ‘She’s very ill. I think she has pneumonia. She needs a doctor. I thought your husband might go down to Bindon and get a message through to Dr Robinson.’
‘Can’t you see the man’s tipsy? Haven’t I had no end of trouble with him already this evening? Just getting him off to bed and then you start the dogs up.’
There was a crash in the front room. It sounded as if Jackson had fallen over.
‘When?’ said Sybil. ‘When might he be better? Well enough to go?’
‘Couldn’t say,’ said Mrs Jackson. ‘It’s the weather, you know. A change in the weather and he’s off. Always has been.’
‘I suppose,’ said Sybil, ‘the best thing is to wait until morning.’
‘Could be,’ said Mrs Jackson. ‘Could be.’
Sybil had not gone back to bed. She stayed up sponging down Mrs Powell, wrapping her in wet sheets trying to reduce her fever, feeding her sips of warm honey and whisky.
Ivy helped when directed but mostly stood about scratching what she called ‘me bites’ — probably fleas, Sybil thought; the farm dogs were full of them — and worrying that they would be snowed in and starve. The girl had only been at Lochinvar two months. She had grown up in Nelson and the snow alarmed her.
At seven o’clock Sybil went back to the Jacksons’ cottage. The morning was clear and sparkling. She knocked. There was silence. She knocked again. The dogs barked; there was still no response from inside the house. Sybil waited for a moment, uncertain what to do next. Then the door opened slightly and Nellie Jackson peeped out.
‘Miss,’ the child said.
‘I have to see your parents, Nellie,’ said Sybil. ‘Mrs Powell’s sick and we need to send for the doctor.’
‘Da’s crook,’ said Nellie. ‘Ma said to tell you he won’t be going no place.’
‘Shut that door, Nellie,’ Mrs Jackson shouted from the interior of the cottage.
‘But Mrs Jackson,’ Sybil said, raising her voice and trying to push the door open further.
‘No!’ shouted Mrs Jackson. ‘I’ll be over myself shortly to see to the house cooking, but Bobs isn’t moving.’
Nellie shut the door.
By the time Sybil had left directions for Mrs Powell’s care and got Hazel saddled and mounted, the sun was out and the wind warm. At first Sybil felt nothing but panic but as she swayed along on the hack’s ample back her fear began to subside. She was grateful that Powell and the boys had reacquainted her with the rudiments of riding during the summer. She still felt very nervous every time Hazel made a sudden or unexpected movement, but once they were on their way the journey seemed far less of an ordeal than she’d expected. Sybil had visited Bindon several times, and though she had never travelled there alone or on horseback, she felt confident she knew the route. Her way took her along the valley floor. The snow was shallow there; bushes pushed greenly through caps of sudsy whiteness and Sybil could hear the soft drip as snow melted from trees and branches.
It took her some time to reach the river, and after working her way a little downstream she recognised the twisted tree on the bank where crossings were usually made. The blue braids of the river channels were fiercely bright in the blanched landscape. The unfamiliar appearance of the river and its ugly reputation made Sybil fearful. She pulled Hazel to a halt as the horse was about to descend into the riverbed.
Sybil had little idea what state the river was in. She knew that the worst floods were in spring and early summer, when the
snow on the mountains melted, but what of an autumn like this one, with sudden snow and then some hours of warm winds and sunshine? The ford didn’t look too high, but how could she accurately judge the depth or the speed of the current?
Entering the river was easy. Hazel had done it before and the horse moved over the stones with a careful tread. They were more than halfway across the major channel when the water became faster and dirtier. Hazel hesitated. Sybil urged her on. The horse took two steps forward. Then there was a slithering sound of rocks moving and Hazel plunged downwards. The water, which had previously been up to Hazel’s knees, was now nudging Sybil’s boot. Hazel started swimming. Sybil,
precariously
perched in the sidesaddle, wished that her thighs were astride the animal’s body and she could grip. Instead her legs were bent, one knee held by the pommel. The water was growing higher and the current swifter; chilling wetness brushed her knees and she had no idea what she should do. Terrified, she put her head down into Hazel’s mane, her arms clinging to the horse’s neck.
Then a floating branch hit the swimming horse and Hazel jerked sideways, pitching Sybil into the water. The cold hit like a fist as she was dragged alongside Hazel, before the horse’s big brown bulk disappeared into the torrent. Sybil, rolled and tossed by the current, couldn’t breathe. Her lungs ached, the top of her head felt as if it was being repeatedly hit by a mallet, and her body screamed with cold. I’m drowning! Sybil thought. I’m about to die. What a waste, she thought angrily. A stupid waste. Dying here in the back of beyond.
Her foot hit something. A rock. Sybil put her arms out and snagged her body against it. She pulled herself up. Here the water was only to her shoulder. She took a deep breath and air flooded her aching lungs. Stiff with fear, cold and exhaustion, Sybil clung to the rock, then with immense effort she dragged
herself out of the river onto the shingle. Water poured from her body and onto the snowy riverbed. Sybil began to cry when she saw Hazel, the sidesaddle hanging off, standing not two hundred yards away, shaking her body violently.
Sybil hardly knew how she made the rest of the journey. She felt as if her blood were frozen solid and the pain in her head and chest never left her. At times she barely knew where she was going or why. Hazel plodded along in the melting snow and Sybil lay clutching her neck for warmth and comfort. When they finally reached Bindon, Sybil was unable to move — she had to be lifted off the horse by one of the stationhands. Mr Worthington himself rode down the valley to fetch Dr Robinson.
Sybil lay shaking in the Worthingtons’ old-fashioned
half-tester
bed and looked at the curtains. There was a warmed brick wrapped in flannel at her feet and a glass of brandy at her elbow on a table. Eventually she slept. She dreamed of the river. It was a massive mouth with teeth that tore and plucked her. Then the mouth became that of Geoffrey Hastings. He was kissing her, her mouth tight against his, her body struggling to be free.
Behind the Lochinvar homestead was a rough track that led to the graveyard where the two little Powell daughters and Tom Milligan, a stationhand killed by a steer, were buried. Lilacs had been planted beside the graves; being autumn, they had already lost their leaves, though the browned remains of last spring’s flowers still hung like wizened fruit.
Sybil looked at the long-dead flowers as Dr Robinson, standing in for the vicar, read the burial service. Freddie Powell had arrived home from the muster to find his wife dead, the doctor supervising a bonfire of Mrs Powell’s bedding and clothing, and Jackson in the yard building a coffin. The next morning the Worthingtons brought Sybil back to Lochinvar. The funeral was in the afternoon.
‘Man that is born of woman hath but a short time to live, and is full of misery. He cometh up and is cut down, like a flower: he fleeth as it were a shadow …’ Dr Robinson read aloud.
Sybil, who was holding the hand of young Nellie Jackson, let the familiar words drift past her. She looked at the group around the open grave. The Powell boys fiddling with their collars and looking at their boots, Freddie Powell tightly holding the rim of his hat and glancing at the mountains. He looked worn, tired, shocked, Sybil thought, though she had no idea what he had felt for his wife.
Cometh up and is cut down, Sybil thought: that is how life is. Poor Mrs Powell — her comings and her goings seemed to have brought little but sorrow. Please, please, Sybil thought, may there be time for me before I am cut down — even just a little time when I can know joy and happiness.
Nothing much changed in the months following Mrs Powell’s death. Cooks and maids continued to come and go with dispiriting regularity, and Freddie Powell was constantly bringing newly recruited employees to the station or depositing those that had given notice at the coach. Sybil taught and sewed and read and walked. Increasingly she felt herself attached to the place. The luminously clear air, the mountains like white knuckles protruding from the grass, the clink of the stream water and the sound of birds. She made books of pressed flowers and adopted a pair of paradise ducks as pets. Denis and Robert were growing older. Sybil knew that in a year or so, when the boys went to boarding school, she would have to leave. By rights they should have been sent to Christchurch already, but the two had prevailed upon their father to let them spend a few more terms on the farm first.
In the evenings Sybil now shared the sitting-room fire with Freddie Powell. The two sat companionably together, reading or
discussing the farm. It had been decided to build new shearing sheds. Sybil encouraged Powell to consider installing the latest mechanical equipment and made sketches of the way she felt the buildings should be arranged.