Dulcie came to the conclusion that it was the prospect of new grass for the ewes which had worked the magic, and that in itself suggested Pat wasn’t quite as stonyhearted as she seemed.
She hadn’t stayed smiling and cheerful of course, that would have been too much to hope for, yet she was less harsh, like today, offering a cup of tea and a sit-down during the day. Sometimes she actually
asked
Dulcie to do something rather than just barking orders at her.
But then the rain and cooler weather made everything easier for everyone. There was more wood-chopping than before, but it wasn’t as tiring to cook and clean, and the men were less grumpy at the end of the day. Bill was overjoyed to have full tanks and his dams full of water, and he too was eagerly awaiting the first lambs. The rain had softened the ground in the vegetable patch, so the last bit of digging and raking wasn’t hard work.
Yet Dulcie still couldn’t claim to be happy or even content. It was just less miserable. Sergeant Collins had been as good as his word and dropped in from time to time bringing her books and magazines to read, but she felt so very lonely, longing for the company of other girls. Pat had said there was a cinema in Salmon Gums, they even had dances in the hall once a fortnight, but without anyone to take her there, and no one there she knew, she couldn’t go. She felt terribly isolated too, as Pat and Bill never had newspapers and did not even possess a radio. Even at St Vincent’s they’d been told when King George VI died, and last year they’d been told a great deal about the Coronation of Princess Elizabeth and shown pictures of it. But she had no idea what was going on in the world now.
Sleeping inside the house was much more comfortable, but when Bill picked a fight with Pat late at night it was horrible to listen to. It wasn’t just slaps he gave her, but punches, and when he was really mad he thrashed her with his belt. He didn’t always rape her afterwards, but he did it often enough for Dulcie to come to expect the bestial sounds, even clearer now through the thin partition wall. He grunted out filthy words as he did it, and Pat’s whimpering and pleas for him to stop made Dulcie’s stomach heave with fright and nausea. After these attacks Pat would limp into the kitchen in the morning, her thin face grey and drawn with pain, and though Dulcie was often tempted to say something, just to show she was concerned, Pat’s hostility prevented it. She often took it out on Dulcie by making her do the very worst jobs, like scrubbing out the dunny.
‘So what did Reverend Mother actually say then?’ Pat asked, breaking into Dulcie’s reverie.
Dulcie didn’t think there was any point in attempting to hide the contents of the letter, so she read it to Pat.
The woman’s odd expression made Dulcie afraid she’d hurt her feelings. ‘She’s right really, I did only write to her when I was upset,’ she said quickly.
‘She’s not right,’ Pat said forcefully, pursing her lips. ‘Don’t you ever start believing nuns care tuppence about the children put in their care. They’ve done to you exactly what they did to me, packed you off without a thought for your safety or your future.’
‘They did it to you? Were you in an orphanage too?’
Pat nodded grimly. ‘In Adelaide. My mother died having my youngest brother, and all five of us were put in an orphanage. I was ten, the oldest, we had a little farm a way out of the town, but it was the thirties and the Depression and our dad had gone off to look for work.’
Pat paused, her lower lip quivering. ‘He never came back for us. Or if he did no one ever told me,’ she went on. ‘We weren’t even kept together, the baby went to one place, the two little boys to another and me and my sister to another.’
Dulcie gasped. ‘That’s dreadful, did you find them again later?’
Pat’s face seemed to close up. ‘That’s not important. All I wanted to say was that the nuns did the same to me. They sent me off to a big cattle station when I was only fourteen. It was hell. Things happened to me there that I can’t even bear to think about. It ruined my life.’
‘But you met Bill and got married,’ Dulcie said, hoping this would prompt further confidences. ‘You’ve got a place of your own now.’
Pat gave her a withering look. ‘I just swapped one kind of hell for another.’
She got up from the table and stood at the sink with her back to Dulcie. Her tense stance, the way she was gripping on to the sink, was evidence she had a lot more on her mind.
She turned round suddenly, her plain, thin face full of anxiety. ‘I wish I could get you out of this,’ she exclaimed. ‘Oh, I know you think I’m the meanest person on this earth, I can’t blame you for that, not after the way I treated you when you first came here, but I had my reasons. I didn’t get the men to come after you that day you ran away because I wanted you to get right away, for your sake. If Sergeant Collins had come when I was on my own I’d have refused to take you back, that way he’d have looked out for you. I know you aren’t in the kind of danger here like I was at the cattle station. But you deserve something better.’
Dulcie was astounded. She had never imagined this strange, cold woman was capable of any concern for anyone. While she couldn’t totally forgive her for the past humiliations, it did seem as if Pat was attempting an explanation, even an apology, and that in itself was enough for now.
‘Well, I can’t go, Pat, not now,’ she replied. ‘So it looks like we’re in this together.’
Pat gave her a long, cool stare. ‘Don’t you go looking for a mother in me,’ she said with her more customary brusqueness. ‘I’m not the person for that. But I’ll try to do right by you.’
It was just a few weeks later when Dulcie woke up one morning to find blood on her nightdress and smears on her inner thighs. She looked at it in horror, convinced it was some serious and maybe even terminal disease, and wondered how on earth she was going to explain it to Pat so she’d get her to a doctor.
She waited till breakfast was over and the men had gone off to work. The lambing had begun and they had to be vigilant for dingoes, shooting them to get the five-shilling bounty for their scalps.
Pat was putting some chicken feed into a pail, and when she saw Dulcie hovering in the doorway she snapped a reminder that cows couldn’t wait forever to be milked.
‘I just wanted to ask you something,’ Dulcie said, struggling not to cry. ‘You see, I’m bleeding.’
‘Bleeding!’ Pat exclaimed. ‘Where from?’
Dulcie made a gesture towards her private parts.
‘That’s just the monthlies. I would’ve thought you’d started those a year or two back,’ Pat said curtly.
Dulcie had no idea what she meant and the harsh tone made her eyes fill with tears.
‘Oh, for Christ’s sake!’ Pat exclaimed. ‘Didn’t the Sisters tell you about that?’ All at once her face softened, she put down the pail and came over to Dulcie, laying one hand on her shoulder. ‘They didn’t, did they? Those Sisters need shooting, the whole bloody lot of them.’
She made Dulcie sit down at the table and explained that it meant she had now stepped into womanhood and would be capable of having babies. As Dulcie listened, it suddenly dawned on her that this had to be what some of the older girls used to whisper about together, and why she’d seen them in the laundry in the evenings sometimes. She had always felt hurt that she was excluded from whatever it was, now she understood. Furthermore, it also explained the two small towels Sister Grace had given her on leaving. She had thought they were face flannels.
When she told Pat this, the older woman grimaced. ‘That’s typical of those sadistic old bitches,’ she said. ‘The place I was in, they made us scrub and scrub them till they were lily-white again, and made us feel like lepers. But you don’t have to use those towels, they make pads especially for this, and you don’t have to wash them, just burn them. I’ll give you a packet and a belt to hold them in place. Next time I go into town I’ll get a supply of them for you.’
It was such a relief to find she wasn’t suffering from some disease or serious internal complaint that Dulcie burst into tears.
‘There’s nothing to cry about,’ Pat said sharply. ‘There’ll come a time when you’ll be glad to see it happen every month. You see, if you go with a man, and it doesn’t come, it means you’re pregnant. So just you be careful if you meet someone you really like, don’t you go letting him sweet-talk you into doing it. Having a baby when you aren’t married is a terrible thing.’
Pat had been marginally more talkative since the day the letter came from Reverend Mother, she had told Dulcie a little about the orphanage she was in, and about her brothers and sisters. Dulcie had reciprocated in part, she said that her mother died and her father put her and May into care because he couldn’t look after them himself. She didn’t trust Pat quite enough to tell her the whole truth.
Talking together had made things more comfortable, and Dulcie was no longer afraid of Pat for she had come to see the anger in the woman wasn’t directed at her. Yet there was something about the way she imparted that bit of information about babies which sounded very much like personal experience, her dark eyes were full of pain and her lower lip was quivering.
‘Did that happen to you?’ Dulcie whispered.
Pat didn’t answer immediately, but she put her elbow on the table and leaned her head against her hand, half-covering her eyes.
‘Yes. But he didn’t sweet-talk me, it was rape, and I was too young and stupid to even know that at the time,’ Pat said, her voice rasping. ‘I didn’t know I was pregnant either, not until the pains came. I had it squatting behind a shed, like an animal.’
Young and innocent as Dulcie was, instinct told her that this was something Pat had never revealed to anyone before, and it was the very core of her deep melancholy. She reacted in the only way she knew to comfort, and that was to take the older woman in her arms and rock her against her chest, like a child.
She half expected to be rebuffed, for Pat to lash out with sarcasm, but instead Pat clung to her and sobbed.
‘What happened to the baby?’ Dulcie whispered, caressing the woman’s bony back and shoulders. There was no reply, just deeper strangled sobs.
‘He was born dead,’ she said eventually, her voice muffled as Dulcie was holding her so tightly. ‘I expect he was too early or that I never had enough food for the both of us. I dug a hole in the ground and buried his body, then I went back into the house and carried on with my work.’
For a moment Dulcie was speechless with shock. The mental picture of a young girl digging a hole and putting a dead baby into it was just too dreadful to contemplate. Yet however shocking it was, Dulcie could feel the pain, terror, guilt and shame that lay beneath the abrupt words. Pat was just a child herself at the time, with no one to turn to, and it was understandable that keeping such a hideous secret to herself, the guilt and shame multiplying over the years, had become an impossible burden.
Tears ran down Dulcie’s cheeks as she rocked the woman. She wished she had the right words to comfort her and show her that she shared her anguish.
Pat suddenly jerked herself out of her arms. ‘You must never tell anyone,’ she pleaded, looking up at Dulcie with tear-filled eyes. ‘I shouldn’t have told you, it’s so terrible. I don’t know why I did, ‘cept I wanted to warn you how bad things can be for young girls. Promise me you won’t ever tell anyone?’
‘Of course I’ll never tell anyone,’ Dulcie sobbed. ‘It’s the saddest thing I ever heard.’
‘It would have been even sadder if the baby lived,’ Pat said grimly. ‘I wasn’t even fifteen, the Sisters would have taken him from me, and he’d have had to go through the misery of an orphanage too. But I wish I hadn’t told you now. I don’t know why I did.’
Dulcie put her hand on Pat’s cheek and stroked it. ‘Don’t be sorry, Pat, maybe it will soothe the pain for you a bit.’
Pat just looked up at her, dark eyes still swimming with tears, her thin lips quivering. ‘You’re made of the right stuff,’ she said, her voice wobbling with emotion. ‘There’s so much kindness in you, you’re bright and plucky too. I reckon you’ll turn out all right.’
The ploughing and the seeding of wheat and barley was done during the winter months, and the lambs were born too in June. Dulcie was shocked to find that here in Australia there was no such thing as a shepherd tending the flock as they had their young. The extent of the farmer’s care didn’t go any further than watching out for dingoes and shooting them.
Pat and Dulcie had to pitch in too, they were expected to help with everything from firing scrub on land Bill wanted cleared, putting up new fencing and keeping the fire breaks around the paddocks clear, to helping out in the shearing shed in August when the shearers came to do their job.
While involved in all this hard work, Dulcie began to understand why Bill and his men were like they were. To farm in the outback, a man had to become like the landscape, harsh and arid, for they couldn’t afford to be weak, faint-hearted or sentimental. Whilst it didn’t make Dulcie like them any better, she could at least respect their dogged perseverance.
Then all at once it was October and spring. Rainfall turned the paddocks of wheat and barley green and lush, and around the edges of the cultivated land, amongst the gums, patches of brilliantly coloured wild flowers sprang up. Dulcie was enchanted by them and was only too glad when Pat sent her off to take sandwiches for the men as it gave her an excuse to examine them. To see the Banksia trees alight with their red, yellow and orange flowers like prickly candles gladdened her heart, she got a thrill from seeing Kangaroo paws, delicate wild orchids, bright pink cone flowers, feather flowers, the yellow blossom on the wattle and pretty white myrtle. She picked bunches of everlastings and brought them home, gleeful when she found the colours wouldn’t fade even after weeks.
Pat smiled at her enthusiasm and said she was in danger of falling in love with Australia and the outback, when most girls fast approaching sixteen were more interested in falling in love with a man. But Dulcie didn’t ever see any young men, and if all farmers had personalities like Bill and his men, she didn’t think she wanted a boyfriend.