Before they had even got out of the car the front door opened and a lady came out to greet them. She was short, white-haired, very plump, and supported herself on a stick. She looked about sixty. Her cotton dress was lavender-coloured with a white lacy collar, and she had a very warm smile.
‘G’day,’ she said. ‘I’ve just made a pot of tea and some scones. Do you want to go and have a chat with Bruce, Sean? He’s over in the barn. Dulcie and I can get to know one another on our own.’
‘Righto, Betty.’ Sergeant Collins made a sort of mock salute. ‘I can see when I’m not wanted.’
She laughed. ‘I’ll save you some tea and scones. Come back in half an hour.’
As Dulcie stepped into the big main room of the house she had the strangest sensation of belonging there. She couldn’t have found one reason to support this feeling, for apart from Susan’s parents’ home in Blackheath, she’d never seen anywhere so nice.
Susan’s home had been traditionally English with beautiful furniture that had been passed down through generations, its thick curtains and carpets designed for comfort and warmth in cold winters. The Frenches’ was the exact opposite, modern, spacious, cool and uncluttered. Not a bit what she would have expected of an elderly farming couple.
The room was very large, with windows on three sides, a polished wood floor with a couple of animal-skin rugs, comfortable-looking armchairs and a couch, and a dining table and chairs by one of the windows. There was nothing old or shabby, the walls were cream, the table gleamed with polish, and there were lots of pictures on the walls.
‘It’s so lovely,’ Dulcie gasped, looking all around her.
‘Not what you expected?’ the woman asked with laughter in her voice. ‘When Ross came in here the first time he was afraid to sit down. I hope it doesn’t affect you like that!’
She asked Dulcie to go into the kitchen and bring out the tray she’d got ready, explaining she found carrying things difficult as she needed her stick. The kitchen was every bit as nice as the living-room, all painted pale lemon and very modern-looking like pictures she had seen in magazines.
Dulcie carried in the tray and put it down on the table where Mrs French was already sitting.
‘Now, dear,’ she said as she placed the cups in their saucers and poured the tea. ‘I know you had an awful time at the Masters’, and I’m quite sure you want to forget it, so why don’t you tell me about you?’
Dulcie didn’t know what she meant by that.
Mrs French must have understood for she reached out and patted her hand. ‘I mean, like your interests, hobbies and things,’ she said. ‘I don’t suppose you got much time for anything like that with the Masters, but Sergeant Collins said you are very good at needlework and like reading.’
Dulcie pulled herself up sharply, she didn’t want the woman to think she was stupid. ‘Yes, I love reading, and I like needlework when I’m making something, but mostly at the convent I only got to do mending. I used to love painting and drawing too, but we didn’t get a chance to do that either.’
Mrs French nodded in understanding, handing her tea and suggesting she helped herself to a scone. ‘How did you do at school? In your lessons, I mean.’
Dulcie explained that she had always been top of the class, but hastily added that she didn’t think that meant a great deal as the Sisters were prone to taking her out of class to do domestic work. ‘I don’t know anything about science, history, geography or current affairs,’ she explained. ‘All the Sisters cared about was neat writing, good spelling, knowing your tables and the Scriptures.’
‘That’s about all I learned at school too,’ Mrs French said with a shrug. ‘I suppose they think that’s all girls need to know as they’ll just get married and have a family. Do you have ambitions beyond that?’
‘I don’t ever want to get married,’ Dulcie replied hastily. ‘I used to want to be a teacher, but I don’t suppose that’s possible without any school exams.’
‘I’m sure you’ll change your mind about getting married if the right young man comes along,’ Mrs French said with a little chuckle. ‘But I believe you can be anything you want to be, if you are determined enough. My husband’s an expert on that.
‘He was born in a humpy in the Karri forests near Manjimup, that’s over Albany way, his father was a tree feller. Right from a little boy he drove bullock trains that hauled the timber out of the forest, desperate hard work, but he was a battler, like his parents before him.’ The older woman paused for a second.
Dulcie nodded, fascinated, and she carried on.
‘He was just twenty when he joined up for the First War, but by then he’d done all sorts, on a whaling ship out of Albany, and as a drover up near Geraldton. I met him in Perth in 1919, my father worked on the railways, and when he saw we were set on getting married he tried to persuade Bruce to join him. But Bruce had his heart set on farming, the government were offering land to old soldiers, so off we came down this way, and got a place north of here. We had some real hard times, Dulcie. During the thirties I thought we were going to starve to death. I used to beg Bruce to take me back to Perth, but he wouldn’t have it, he was determined to be a farmer, you see.’ She paused for breath again and to butter a scone.
‘Now, Sam Oldenshaw had this place then,’ she went on, waving the butter knife at the view of the farm outside the window. ‘Bruce used to come and work for him sometimes. Sam couldn’t pay him anything, like everyone else then he was struggling to keep going himself, but he’d give us some mutton and milk from his cows. Things got so bad for us we had to leave our place, and Sam let us come here. We were so grateful we worked like demons for him. Then when Sam died in 1938, he left the farm to us. We couldn’t believe it. He was such a grumpy old devil. We never thought he appreciated anything we’d done for him.’
Dulcie smiled. Mrs French was clearly one of those people who had a great many stories to tell.
‘Reckon Sam would be right proud of what Bruce has done since,’ Mrs French said with more than a touch of pride herself. ‘Sam only had seven hundred acres, and mostly everyone in farming failed round here because the soil was so bad. But my Bruce was one of the first to try the modern fertilizers that put stuff like copper and zinc into the soil – it worked too! Bruce turned it around and made it pay, he bought more land as well, we’ve got nigh on two thousand acres now. When we got to pull down Sam’s old tumble-down shack and built this place, I was the happiest woman on earth. But like I said, if you want something badly enough, you can get it, providing you’re prepared to work hard for it.’
By now Dulcie was pretty certain that she could be happy here. ‘What sort of help do you need, Mrs French?’ she said, anxious to bring the conversation back to the job.
‘Oh, I don’t know,’ the woman sighed. ‘Just general stuff, I reckon. I’ve never had anyone to help me before.’
Having heard how hard both Mr and Mrs French had worked all their lives, Dulcie sensed Mrs French felt a little embarrassed at finding herself in the position where she needed help with chores she’d always done herself.
‘I expect polishing the floor, cleaning the windows and that kind of thing is hardest, isn’t it?’ Dulcie said, feeling she needed the woman to see she was keen to work. ‘I’m really good at cleaning, the Sisters made us do it all. But I’m all right at cooking too, and doing the washing.’
‘If you do all that there won’t be anything much left for me to do,’ Mrs French said with a smile. ‘Well, let me show you round and I expect by then the men will be coming in.’
The whole house was as lovely as the living-room, and Dulcie was astonished to see a beautiful patchwork quilt on Mrs French’s bed, each square embroidered with a different flower. ‘That’s my hobby,’ she said a little shyly when Dulcie exclaimed over it. ‘Maybe you’d like to make one too.’ She went on then to show Dulcie her sewing-room, with the first electric sewing-machine Dulcie had ever seen. ‘Of course the embroidery is all done by hand, but I join the squares by machine.’ To illustrate this she showed her a baby’s quilt she was working on, at present only the four central squares completed, each with an embroidered animal.
She showed her how she traced designs from books, and said she wished she could draw as she had ideas in her head she couldn’t find pictures of. ‘Maybe you’ll be able to draw some for me,’ she remarked, going on to show Dulcie samples of another kind of work she called collage, where small pieces of contrasting fabric were sewn on with embroidery stitches to make even more complicated designs.
After that she showed Dulcie the smaller of the two spare rooms, which would be hers, and it was all Dulcie could do not to burst into tears because it was so pretty. Pink curtains, another lovely quilt on the single bed, even a bedside light for reading and a white sheepskin rug on the floor.
‘Was this your daughter’s room?’ she asked curiously, unable to believe anyone would have such a lovely spare bedroom and be prepared to let her sleep in it.
‘We don’t have any children,’ Mrs French replied, a wistful look in her eyes, then she cocked her head on one side and said she heard the men coming in.
Mr French was a big man. Not just in size, though he was over six foot and well built, but because he had a personality that filled the room. Dulcie’s first impression was that he couldn’t possibly be over sixty, even if his thick hair was snowy white, for his bright blue eyes twinkled like a young man’s and his voice was deep and vibrant. It was only much later that she noticed he had baggy skin beneath his eyes, and he walked with a slight limp as if his knees were stiff.
The men at the Masters’ place had done nothing to ease Dulcie’s timidity with the male sex. Even alone with Sergeant Collins she was often tongue-tied. Yet there was something about the way Mr French spoke to her that made her feel as if she’d known him all her life. His gentle questions such as did she like the house, and did she think she could be happy working for him and his wife, were so unexpected it made a lump come up in her throat. She hadn’t thought it was possible that any employer would care about her happiness.
‘I know I’ll be happy here,’ she said eagerly. ‘The only thing I’m worried about is that there won’t be enough work for me in the house. I could do chores outside too, I can see to the chickens, milk cows, and I can drive a tractor.’
Sergeant Collins gave her a sharp look as if to warn her she was talking herself back into the same kind of work she did with the Masters.
Yet Bruce just laughed. ‘Beaut!’ he exclaimed. ‘If you can manage a tractor, you’ll soon pick up driving my car. Betty gets in a blue every time I keep her waiting to take her into town or to visit friends, so you’ll be able to take her. Now, you’re not scared of snakes, are you? There’s more here than up at Salmon Gums on account of the lake.’
Dulcie gulped. She had learnt to put them out of her mind while with the Masters as she rarely saw one. But she couldn’t say she wasn’t scared of them.
‘Now, don’t go frightening her,’ his wife reproved him. ‘They hardly ever come near the house. Don’t worry, Dulcie!’
By the time Dulcie and Sergeant Collins left about an hour and a half later, after a tour around the property in Mr French’s farm truck, Dulcie felt as though she was floating on a cloud, and couldn’t wait to get back the following day to start work.
Both Mr and Mrs French, who insisted she was to call them Bruce and Betty, were great talkers. After months of mostly being ignored by the Masters, it was thrilling to be with people who wanted to share their life and their passion for farming with her.
Dulcie supposed that Bill had had a similar passion too, yet he certainly hadn’t shown joy in it as Bruce did. As they were driving around the edge of one paddock where clover was growing, towards the lake on the property, Bruce had suddenly made a statement which almost made her cry.
‘I’m such a lucky man,’ he said, looking round at her and grinning broadly. ‘I might have been born poor, but I’ve been given such riches. I’m never sick, I’m strong and healthy. My parents loved me, my mother, bless her, couldn’t read or write, but she somehow always found someone around who was willing to teach me. My father taught me respect for living things, he loved his trees and animals. I came through the First World War unharmed when so many of my mates copped it. Then I met Betty. She enriched my life then, and she still does. She’s stuck by me through thick and thin, and we certainly had plenty of the thin in the past. Then old Sam leaves us this place! That was like being given the sun, the moon and the stars! Sometimes I wonder what I ever did to deserve such good luck!’
Dulcie knew the answer to that, even if she was too shy to say it. His luck came to him because he was a kind, good man and because he looked at everything with delight and optimism.
She had only seen Ross and John Withers at a distance across a paddock, but they’d waved, and she’d felt they were glad she was here too now. Betty said there was also a third man called Bob and they all lived in the bunkhouse on the far side of the farm, but took their meals in the house as she and Bruce saw them as family. Just that word
family
sent delicious shivers down Dulcie’s spine – she’d had a taste of that with the Collins and she’d come to love it.
‘I knew you’d like them and they’d like you,’ Sergeant Collins said with great pleasure as they drove back into Esperance. ‘Having no kids of their own has been their one sadness, Betty lost three babies during the Depression, you know. But she’s never let it turn her sour. Did she tell you about old Sam who gave them the farm?’
Dulcie nodded.
‘But what neither of them will ever tell you is that he was the meanest, most cantankerous bastard God ever created,’ he said with some feeling. ‘He’d take a horsewhip to a man for spilling a pail of milk, he treated women like dirt. But he took them in when their farm failed, and that was enough for Bruce and Betty. They slaved for him, nursed him when he was sick, treated him like he was their father even though he put them through hell sometimes.’ Collins broke off to grin at Dulcie.
‘That wily old fox got me to witness his will, but he kept his hands over the words so I wouldn’t know what was in it. I was only a young copper then, too wrapped up in my own family and career to care much about anyone else, but I liked Bruce and Betty a lot and I sweated blood when I knew Sam was dying, imagining them turned out of the farm after all they’d done. But I reckon Sam had more upstairs than any of us guessed. It was like I’d won the Melbourne Cup the day I heard the good news. I never was so glad for anyone.’