May had been patted on the bottom many times by other Sisters, but she knew this wasn’t the same, and the very next time she had to go over to the convent for her piano lesson, Mother caressed her breasts and said she thought it was time she bought her a brassiere. A month earlier May would have killed to have such a thing. The girls who already wore them only got dished out with a secondhand one once their breasts were becoming an embarrassment. Yet she would rather have had the most worn, stretched one in the box than the humiliation of having Mother coming into the cubicle with her in the shop and insisting on fitting it herself, and her hands touching her bare skin.
Sometimes May tried to tell herself that this sort of touch was one that any mother would give her daughter, but even if she could only barely remember her own mother now, her heart told her that wasn’t so. Reverend Mother kissed her on the mouth too when they were alone, and the last time she’d done it she put her tongue in and held her very tightly. It made May feel really sick.
The worst of it was, she knew it wasn’t going to stop either, not unless she hit Mother or made a huge fuss. But what would that bring her? A beating like the one Dulcie got? She could still see those weals on her sister’s bottom now and her face contorted with pain. She didn’t think she could bear that.
Tears trickled down May’s cheeks as she made her way on to the playing field. She had always held up that night Sister Teresa had put her in the Dark Place as the worst thing that could ever happen to her, she still had occasional nightmares about it. But this was equally bad in a different way because she felt a kind of evil presence with her at all times, knowing deep down that she was being sucked into something that was horribly wrong. Dulcie had once said before she left here that creeping around Mother wasn’t a smart thing to do. At the time May just thought she was jealous of the treats she got. But maybe Dulcie knew what she was like, perhaps Mother had even touched
her.
‘You should have warned me, Dulcie,’ she thought indignantly. ‘And if you don’t write to me soon I’ll forget all about you too.’
The harvest was finally finished on Boxing Day. Apart from a roast chicken dinner, Christmas had passed like any other day, and Dulcie was glad of that. She was too exhausted when she crawled into bed on Christmas Eve to remember the time when she and May had hung their stockings on the end of the bed and lain awake for ages trying to see Santa Claus coming in to fill them.
She was up and out into the fields too early the following morning to dwell on how she and May would take their stockings along to their parents’ room and get into bed with them. Daddy always put a silly hat on, and he’d make a tinsel crown for Mummy, and sing them ‘Rudolph the Red Nose Reindeer’ while they unwrapped the little parcels.
Occasionally during the day her mind slipped back to remembering the smell of the Christmas tree, the taste of sugar mice, or the sound of church bells and carols. But with the sun burning down on her as she drove the tractor, it was difficult to picture the frosty, foggy December nights back in England, seeing piles of tangerines in the greengrocer’s, and turkeys and chickens hanging up in the butcher’s shop window. Even if there was a slight sense of guilt that for the first time in her life she hadn’t attended Christmas Mass, surely gathering in the harvest which would help feed so many people was really a better thing to be doing?
Then finally it was finished, the paddocks left with only short stubble, the grain all gone down to the bulkhead, and Dulcie shared Bill’s jubilation.
‘They said I’d never grow cereals out here,’ he crowed, grinning from ear to ear. ‘They said I’d go bust like all the others that tried, but I knew it could be done. I knew it.’
Dulcie could understand his elation. Sergeant Collins had told her on one of his visits that this area had defeated farmers again and again, the soil was too salty, the rainfall too low. Even though thanks to the experimental station at Salmon Gums it had been proved that by putting superphosphate on to the soil it would improve conditions, few men who hadn’t been born and raised in this area were brave enough to risk breaking their backs clearing land and planting seed with no guarantee they would succeed where others had failed.
Many times during the harvesting Dulcie had found herself admiring Bill and his men. She might be appalled by their crudeness and lack of respect or understanding of women, but it took real men to take such vast areas of this arid, barren land, clear it and make crops grow. She felt they had every right to be pleased with themselves for it was a magnificent achievement.
Yet as she smiled at the men cavorting around like overexcited schoolboys and shared their joy, she glanced over at Pat, and the smile on her face froze. Pat was gazing at her husband with absolute hatred.
It not only chilled Dulcie but made no sense either. Bill might be hateful to Pat – in all the months she’d been here Dulcie had never heard him say a kind or tender word to her – but surely a good harvest meant security for both of them, in time a better home, and money in the bank? She wondered where the woman’s mind was.
Later that same night, she found out. The men wolfed down their evening meal and went straight off to the pub. As Dulcie washed up the dishes she heard a faint sound from the living-room and went in there to find Pat crying.
She was sitting at the desk, her head down on a bed of paperwork. She still had bits of straw in her lank, greasy hair and was wearing the same cotton trousers and man’s shirt she’d had on all week.
‘What is it?’ Dulcie asked, putting her hand on her shoulder. ‘Are you feeling poorly? Why don’t you go and get into bed and I’ll make you some hot milk.’
‘It will take more than rest and hot milk to make me feel better,’ Pat sniffed. ‘You don’t know how hard I prayed for a storm, a bush fire, anything but to see that harvest gathered in.’
Dulcie was bewildered. She perched on the arm of the couch next to Pat. ‘I don’t understand. Surely a good harvest is good for you too,’ she said. The woman badly needed a bath, she stank to high heaven and her hair looked as though she hadn’t washed it for weeks. ‘Tell me why you didn’t want it, Pat, please.’
Pat sat up and looked at Dulcie. Her eyes were swollen and she looked pale despite her sun-burnt skin. ‘He’ll be unstoppable now,’ she said with a shrug. ‘He’ll get more and more land, borrow more and more money, and he’ll expect me to take the brunt of his bad temper when he’s worried. I won’t ever see a penny of anything he makes, but he’ll have me working every waking hour. What sort of life is that?’
Dulcie had learnt from Jake that as far as the hard work was concerned Pat was no different to any other farmer’s wife in the area, they all worked like dogs. Yet according to Jake, mostly they revelled in it, but of course they probably had husbands who treated them kindly.
‘It might not be that way.’ Dulcie thought Pat was being overly pessimistic. Bill might be a pig to her, but he wasn’t a fool. ‘Besides, if the harvest had failed you’d have been far worse off.’
Pat shook her head. ‘I wouldn’t, you see I had it planned. First I was going to say we couldn’t afford to keep you any more. He would’ve agreed with that immediately and I could have found you a job in a decent place down in Esperance. Then I was going to go too, go on back to Adelaide and get work as a housekeeper or something.’
Dulcie’s eyes widened with shock. ‘You were going to leave him?’
‘Surely you don’t imagine I love him?’ Pat snapped. ‘You’ve seen how he treats me. Could any woman love a man like that?’
Dulcie didn’t know what to say. Bad as Bill was, she’d got the idea Pat was totally resigned to it.
‘You’ll see why I have to leave him in the next few days,’ Pat said darkly. ‘He’ll go on a bender now, drinking till he’s got no cash left. He’ll come home and hit me when I’m not dazzled by all his wild plans. It’s going to be hell.’
Dulcie persuaded her to go and have a shower and wash her hair while she made her a drink. Then once Pat was in bed, she came and sat by her. She had no advice to offer her, part of her thought she was over-reacting because she was exhausted, she even thought that maybe if Pat showed a bit more enthusiasm towards Bill’s plans he might be nicer to her.
Yet she was touched that this woman with troubles enough of her own had wished to help her leave before she did. For that kind thought she was prepared to sit here all night if necessary.
‘I was working in a pub in Kalgoorlie when I met Bill,’ Pat said suddenly, her sun-tanned face very dark against the white pillow. ‘I was twenty-two and I’d already been to hell and back several times. He came into the pub one night and talking to him was like having a breath of fresh, sweet air. He’d just been demobbed from the army but he came from a farming background – when he spoke of it he brought back good memories from when I was just a little kid. He said he was after a place down this way, and some blokes in the pub took the rise out of him and said he’d be wasting his time and energy. But it was that energy about him I liked, Dulcie, I’d known too many dead-beats. He stayed in Kalgoorlie for about a week before he got a job on a farm around Norseman, and in that time he asked me to marry him. He said I was everything he wanted.’
Pat broke off then and began to cry again. ‘I might have known a man couldn’t want me in a romantic way, all my life until then every man I ever met used me, then walked away. But I thought Bill was different,’ she sobbed.
Dulcie stroked back her damp hair and wondered how anyone could imagine ape-like Bill to be a romantic hero – she knew nothing of men, but just one look at him had told her what he was.
‘Well, I married him and right off I saw what he meant by “I was everything he ever wanted”. A good cook, a slave, someone to kick about when he felt miserable. A woman who wouldn’t complain when he spent every spare hour with his mates. I was a dream to him, but it was a bloody nightmare for me. Once we got this place it got even worse. I’m a prisoner, Dulcie, I’m only thirty-one and I look forty. Unless I make a break for it soon, that’s my life for ever. All I can say is, thank God I never had a child by him.’
‘Go to sleep now, Pat,’ Dulcie urged her. ‘You might be wrong about him, he might be so happy now that everything will change. I’ll say my prayers for him and you tonight.’
Pat’s dark eyes opened wide and she jerked her head off the pillow. ‘Surely you don’t believe in any of that claptrap any longer?’
Dulcie hadn’t seen a priest or been anywhere near a church since she arrived here and she had no intention of ever doing so. She had turned her back quite firmly on all that ‘claptrap’ as Pat called it. But that was the Catholic Church, they’d lied and cheated her, she’d found what they did in the name of God was evil. But the God her granny had taught her to pray to was still there, she saw His handiwork every day out in the bush, felt His comforting presence all around her. She hadn’t quite given up on Him.
‘I still believe someone watches over us,’ she said softly. ‘I have to otherwise I’d just give up.’
But if God heard her prayers that night, he didn’t intervene on Pat’s behalf. Bill did come home drunk, vomited all over the kitchen floor, then forced his attentions on Pat in the most brutal manner. Dulcie lay quivering in her bed, listening to Bill’s crazed lust and Pat’s distressed whimpers, and promised herself she would never marry.
Pat was right in all her predictions. Bill kept up drinking both day and night for around a fortnight. Sometimes he didn’t come home at all, and when he did, he hit her. The other men joined him in his bender at first, but by the end of the first week they were back to work again without him. There was an uneasy atmosphere when they came in to eat, as if they felt uncomfortable being in the house while Bill wasn’t there. Yet all of them were nicer to Pat. Ted and Bert came in with wood they’d chopped for her, Jake often stacked up the dishes or took the chook-food pail from her hands and said he’d feed them. But then this time Bill had marked her face with his blows, and to see a woman with a half-closed eye was evidence of his cruelty to her, and perhaps they felt that Bill was going too far now.
Then suddenly Bill came back to work and took up the reins again, acting as if he’d just been away on a short holiday. Pat was right too about him wanting to get more land and new machinery – every evening over dinner he talked of little else.
Sometimes Pat would catch Dulcie’s eye and gave her an ‘I-told-you-so’ look. But she had sunk back into one of her morose moods again and made no further confidences.
Chapter Twelve
‘Where’s Pat?’ Bill asked as he came into the kitchen for supper. It was May, the lambing just over, and it was cold. Bill was scowling as usual and rubbing his dirty hands together to warm them.
‘Mucking out the pigs,’ Dulcie replied. Bill had bought three piglets back in January in the hopes they could breed from them. Pat had gone out a couple of hours ago, telling Dulcie to make the supper, and it was only now that Bill asked where she was that Dulcie noticed it was dark outside.
‘Those bloody pigs get better treatment than us,’ Ted said. ‘What’s for supper, Dulc?’
‘Lancashire hot-pot,’ Dulcie replied and half smiled at Ted’s face lighting up. She had found the recipe in a magazine and it had become one of the men’s favourite meals. The men sat down at the table and she put their plates of food in front of them.
Bill began to wolf down his, but stopped suddenly to look round at the window. ‘Get Pat in,’ he said sharply. ‘All I need now is for her to get bitten by a snake and have to drive down to the hospital.’
Dulcie went straight away, only stopping to put on a pair of Wellingtons and light a lantern. By day she never thought about snakes and hardly ever wore shoes outside, but it was different when she couldn’t see what was on the ground.
She called Sly and Prince to come with her as the pigs’ enclosure was on the far side of the barn. Many times in the past they’d barked a warning when there were snakes about, and their presence was comforting.
As she made her way over towards the pig sty, Dulcie was thinking about going to Esperance with Jake later in the week. Bill often let her go with Jake on his monthly trips into town, and during the summer months she’d been able to get to the beach while he collected spare parts for the machinery and provisions.