‘Now, Bruce, just remember that you have a big family up in Perth, and you can come and stay with us whenever you need us.’
Dulcie listened to Betty’s diminutive sister Rose offering Bruce comfort and hugging him before she got into the car, and it was like seeing and hearing Betty all over again. Rose and the other sister Joan were so like Betty in looks and personalities that for the five days they’d been here she’d felt safe and secure. With them she’d been able to express her grief, to laugh at the things Betty said, to listen to childhood stories and applaud her many talents from her fine needlework to her gift with people. But now they had to go. Their grown-up children had left yesterday, along with Betty’s brother Clive, his wife and daughter too. The house was going to be so empty and quiet again.
Rose finally got into the car and it rolled out down the track. Dulcie moved closer to Bruce, feeling his deep sadness at the parting. She slipped one arm through his and waved with the other.
People said it Was the best attended funeral they’d ever known. The shops had closed out of respect in Esperance, and the mourners had come from a 150-mile radius. Dulcie had worn Betty’s pert little black hat with a veil, and it was only much later that Rose had told her Betty hadn’t bought it for a funeral as she supposed, but to wear on her honeymoon on Rottnest Island off the coast of Perth. She’d scandalized her mother by choosing black instead of a pastel shade, because she said she wanted to look seductive, not pretty.
‘Her family are all so kind,’ Bruce said with a sigh as the car finally disappeared. ‘For two pins I’d sell up and go and join them in Perth.’
‘Why don’t you then?’ Dulcie asked as they walked back to the house.
Bruce stopped and tweaked her cheek. ‘Because I’m a farmer, not a city boy. I’d like being near them for a while, but it’s too confining, too noisy.’
‘You could get a smaller farm somewhere near enough to visit whenever you felt like it,’ she said.
‘I could, but I won’t,’ he said with a smile. ‘I can feel Betty here. I’ve got long roots that won’t pull up easily. Just don’t you leave me until I’ve got settled again.’
‘I’m not planning on going anywhere,’ she said.
For all the shock of Betty’s death, the sadness of the funeral and the knowledge that life wasn’t ever going to be quite the same again here, Dulcie felt optimistic. She knew there had been a bit of a fight between John and Ross on the night of Betty’s death, Ross had come in the next morning with a bruise on his jaw. But he’d apologized to her, cuddled and kissed her and explained that he was too upset to think straight. He’d gone off with Bruce for a walk and a chat later that morning, and though neither of them had told her what had been said, the air was cleared.
While all the visitors were here, she hadn’t seen very much of Ross, but that was just through circumstances. She was up to her ears in preparing and cooking food. Ross, John and Bob came in for their usual meals, then scurried out to work again to make room for the guests. But Ross had been at her side throughout the funeral, and although his face was set like concrete and he didn’t allow himself the weakness of tears, she sensed that when he disappeared from the wake in the house later, it was because he wanted to cry in private.
He had come in after the evening milking, and he’d made a great effort to be sociable. She was touched too how much he tried to help her, collecting up plates and cups, washing up and getting people drinks.
‘Would you like to go up to Perth for a holiday?’ Bruce said as they got to the house. ‘You haven’t had a day off in over a year, and you could stay with Rose or Joan. It would give you a chance to see May.’
Dulcie was taken aback by the offer. ‘But you need me here!’ she said.
Bruce smiled. ‘I didn’t mean for you to go right now. Maybe later, in the spring. We can manage okay, believe it or not I can cook and wash a few clothes. I’m not helpless.’
‘It would be great to see May,’ she said gratefully. May was seventeen now, she’d got her shorthand and typing diploma, and she’d hinted in both her last two letters that she wanted to go and work in Sydney. Once she was there Dulcie knew she’d never get to see her, it was just too far away.
‘Then you must go,’ Bruce said as they went indoors. ‘I don’t suppose Ross will be too pleased, but it will do you two good to have some time apart to think things out.’
Bruce stayed indoors that day. There were a hundred and one jobs outside to be done, but he felt drained, emotionally and physically. He pulled the armchair up close to the stove, put his feet on a stool and closed his eyes. He could hear Dulcie putting the bedrooms back to rights again, and it was a comforting, peaceful sound after all the noise and bustle of the last few days.
It had been Betty’s idea that Dulcie should go to Perth for a while. She’d made the suggestion several months earlier, because she felt Dulcie should have a chance to compare life in a city with here in the bush. She hadn’t been entirely happy about her marrying Ross, and although back then Bruce had scoffed at her reasons, he had come to understand them a great deal better in the last week or so.
When Ross came to him the day after Betty’s death and poured out how he’d felt about her, and how sorry he was he hadn’t told her himself, Bruce felt deeply for him. He guessed Ross had opened up as a result of John laying into him, and it saddened him even more to think that it took violence to goad him into expressing his feelings. Dulcie was quite the reverse, all it took to gain her confidence was affection.
He’d watched the pair of them at the wake after the funeral and noted alarming differences in their manner. Dulcie liked people. She might be a little shy still, but she was interested, attentive and a natural diplomat. How she had managed to produce so much food in just a couple of days astounded him, and Rose and Joan both pronounced her a little wonder, yet she didn’t once overstep the mark into familiarity but retained her position as housekeeper, making sure everyone had enough to eat and drink, that their beds were made and clean towels laid out for them, and she cleaned and tidied around everyone without anyone really noticing.
Ross, however, veered between ingratiating himself with the guests and ignoring them. Sometimes he was too familiar, almost as if he was part of the family, at other times so distant he could have been a newly arrived stockman. He drank too much, interrupted some of the men’s conversations, and he was awkward with the women. It was true he helped Dulcie quite a bit, but in a flamboyant way that was irritating. The top and bottom of it was that he obviously felt like a fish out of water and he was trying far too hard.
Bruce couldn’t help but look at John and admire his effortless charm. He paid the women gentle compliments, remembered their names and found them seats. He could talk to city-born Clive just as easily as he could to some of the old farmers. He curbed his drinking, introduced people to one another and managed to maintain just the right balance of solemnity fitting to the occasion without letting it sink to maudlin levels.
That night when Bruce went to bed over in the bunk-house, he found himself wishing it was John Dulcie loved. He was too old for her, he had a long record of loving and leaving women, but he had a youthful spirit, and Bruce suspected that he’d left more women smiling than he’d ever left in tears. But it was the openness of his character that appealed most. There was something malignant inside Ross, some deep hurt he hadn’t been able to overcome. He’d blurted out when they had their talk that the school he’d been to and run away from was Bindoon, and that it was the treatment he’d received there which made him different from other people. Yet Bruce remembered reading in the paper that Brother Keaney of the Christian Brothers who founded it received an MBE for his unselfish and efficient work with the youth of Australia. Keaney was a popular hero throughout Western Australia. Bruce couldn’t imagine such a man condoning ill-treatment of the children in his care.
In view of all this, Bruce intended to encourage Dulcie to wait a little longer before marrying Ross. She would be twenty-two in December, old enough to marry anyone she chose. But there was no harm in introducing a little more variety and outside interest into her life. That’s what Betty would have done if she hadn’t become ill.
Just thinking of her made the sadness well up inside him again. He knew Dulcie had moved all his things back into their old bedroom today. Tonight he’d sleep under Betty’s beautiful quilt, he’d look up at the curtains and remember how flushed with excitement Betty had been as they hung them together. It had meant so much to them both finally to have a real house of their own. They believed then that they still had another twenty years or so to enjoy it. The bed was going to be too big without her, the whole place seemed pointless without sharing it with her. They had no children to leave it to, perhaps he should sell up?
He sighed and opened his eyes. Dulcie was standing in the doorway looking at him. ‘Would you like some tea?’ she asked, her sweet face wreathed with concern.
‘If you come and sit with me and have some too,’ he said. ‘I got into thinking sad thoughts,’
She came closer and ruffled his hair. ‘It will be like that for quite a while,’ she said. ‘But you can share them with me if you want to.’
He half smiled. For someone so young she had so much understanding. ‘No, you just boot me out to do some work,’ he said. ‘That’s what Betty would have done.’
‘I will when I think that’s what you need. But right now you need rest, tea and sympathy.’
‘I’ll drive you up to Perth when you go,’ Bruce said impulsively. ‘I’ll drop you off with Rose and Joan, then go on up to Geraldton and see some old mates. Then I can pick you up on the way back. Reckon we both need something to look forward to.’
Chapter Nineteen
Dulcie walked down View Road in Peppermint Grove with a light step, happily admiring all the nice houses and well-kept gardens. She had never really been able to imagine where May worked, what the house was like, or the neighbourhood. All she knew was that it was near the river on one side, and the sea on the other.
It was November, a warm spring afternoon without a cloud in the sky. She and Bruce had driven up from Esperance and arrived at Joan’s yesterday. Tomorrow Bruce was going on up to Geraldton, and when Dulcie telephoned May this morning Mrs Wilberforce invited her over for tea.
Dulcie paused for just a second when she saw number 32, suddenly understanding what May had meant when she said it was an English house. It was perhaps the oldest in the street, and very like the Edwardian villas she remembered in Blackheath. Old grey stone, bay windows, and a tiled path up to the front door. She could remember such houses having a balcony upstairs too, but this one had been extended to a veranda right round the side of the house. The many climbing plants scrambling up to it and the bushes and trees shading it made her think of pictures she’d seen of homes in the tropics.
‘Dulcie!’ May exclaimed gleefully as she opened the door. ‘It’s so good to see you. Come on in, Mrs Wilberforce is really pleased she’s going to meet you at last.’
‘You can’t imagine how excited I’ve been,’ Dulcie said as she hugged her sister. ‘But let me look at you! I can’t believe it, you’re so grown-up.’
She had never doubted that May would still be pretty, but in the three years since they last saw one another May’s looks had taken on a new dimension. Even in a plain navy blue dress and apron she looked polished, not a blemish on her perfect complexion, her hair fixed up in a sleek style Dulcie recognized as a French pleat. She was no longer just pretty, but beautiful.
‘I feel like a country bumpkin next to you,’ Dulcie admitted, suddenly wishing she’d made a little more effort with her appearance – putting her hair up in a pony-tail was hardly sophisticated.
‘You look lovely to me.’ May grinned, then moving closer went to whisper in her ear, ‘Come on, let’s get this tea over with. After that we’ll go down to the river so we can talk. I’ve been saving my days off, so I’ve got three whole days to spend with you.’
Dulcie thought Mrs Wilberforce was the most elegant and gracious woman she’d ever met, beautifully dressed, her hair just so, and such a lovely English accent. But then she was spellbound by everything here in Peppermint Grove – Mrs Wilberforce, her house and garden, even her own sister’s looks. She couldn’t help but feel a little envy that May had landed a job like this, while she’d been packed off to Salmon Gums.
Yet seeing her little sister acting like a real lady, pouring tea into bone-china cups, passing round plates of dainty sandwiches and cakes, all prepared by herself, was so pleasing. She would have been very upset to find May in a position where she was treated like a drudge.
‘Isn’t farming rather a hard life?’ Mrs Wilberforce asked at one point in the conversation. ‘You look so very fragile, Dulcie. I expected a big strapping girl.’
Dulcie laughed. Both Joan and Rose had made similar remarks to her at the funeral. She supposed she didn’t look like the stereotype farm girl. ‘I’m tougher than I look,’ she said. ‘Besides, I don’t actually work on the farm, except at harvest when I pitch in. I feed the chooks, look after the garden, but everything else is indoors.’ She went on to describe a little of how it was at her first job and Mrs Wilberforce winced.
Mrs Wilberforce asked how Mr French was managing without his wife, and it was clear to Dulcie she was as kind-hearted as she was elegant. Then finally the tea was over, and she told the girls they could go on out, and that she would clear up.
‘Just let me take these out,’ Dulcie hastily began stacking up the plates and cups on to a tray. ‘I wouldn’t feel right leaving you to do it.’
‘What a sweet girl you are, Dulcie,’ Mrs Wilberforce said, smiling. But she took the tray from Dulcie’s hands and shooed them both out. ‘Go on with you. You’ve got a lot of catching up to do.’
May chattered non-stop all the way down to the river, pointing out her favourite houses and what she knew of the people who lived in them. Dulcie stopped listening when they came to the riverside, for it was breathtakingly beautiful. It was in fact a little curving bay, small boats moored at anchor, a narrow strip of sand along the water’s edge and several children splashing in the shallows, which gave more of an impression of a seaside scene than a river.