If I had troubles, I must not allow them all to be seen as of other people’s making. It is true that when I went north all that happened to me on that awful first night was totally unexpected. It is so that I was to spend a long and miserable time on my own, and using childishness as an excuse, but also, I think, a legitimate reason, I did not know how to spend the time profitably. Nor can I be blamed for the natures of the people who lived at Carlyle House.

  Yet if I am honest, I have to say that there was, too, a curiosity which is part of my nature. But until that time I had had no need to exercise this curiosity about my world. It was safe and ordered and the people were predictable. But all that had changed. I did not have my grandmother or grandfather, or any of the aunts and uncles, to run to and ask for advice. The cousins who had been my companions had been replaced by two apparently quite monstrous young people. My relationship with my mother was threatened on every side, and she didn’t want to talk about all the things that were crowding in and making me afraid.

  It would have been simpler to walk away, to see nothing. I chose to be curious. I can’t blame anyone else for that.

  So when Elva von Hart and Frederick Barnsley walked down towards the orchards that morning, I waited for them to disappear round the circular path. Then I slipped back into Elva’s room and through the door beyond the piano, the one leading into the passage where I had had my first encounter with the young Barnsleys. The light was so bright outside that it was almost impossible to see in the dim light of the passage. I shut the door behind me, and immediately I was in near-darkness. I could just see a shape looming up beside me. The person, whoever it was, was standing across the passage so that I could not pass without touching him. I waited to be seized but nothing happened, and as my eyes grew accustomed to the light I saw that it was Schwass. He was knocking on the door of the mysterious person in the house whose presence I had already heard more than once. He had failed to react to my presence because he had not heard me.

  In that strange gutteral voice, if that’s how it could be described, he was calling at the door. ‘Aw-pun. Aw-pun,’ he grunted.

  I was in such blind terror that I made to run past him regardless of whether he saw me or not, but at exactly that moment he must have sensed me there for he swung round and caught me by the arm. I tried to jerk away from him, but his hands were amazingly strong for someone who looked as frail and old as he did. With his free hand he pointed at the closed door making little jabbing motions in the air.

  ‘I don’t know what you want,’ I gasped.

  I thought perhaps he wanted me to open the door for him, so I grabbed the door handle with my free hand and rattled it. It was firmly locked.

  ‘I can’t, it’s locked.’

  He shook his head violently, grunting impatiently.

  ‘I’ll have to go Mr Schwass. I can’t help you. Shall I get my father?’

  My conversation seemed pointless, but he could lip read a bit, and had some idea of what I was saying to him. He relaxed his grip on my arm, and I poised to take flight.

  But he was making such small insistent noises and seemed so anxious that I should stay with him that I waited. He pulled a piece of paper and pencil out of his pocket. It was the same yellowish newsprint that the note my mother had shown me in the kitchen had been written on. He started writing at great speed, pressing the paper against the wall.

  Could I read? he asked in the note.

  I nodded. Next he wrote down an instruction – to call out to ‘her’ the words, ‘Hoy Morn.’

  I asked him what he meant, but if he had any idea of what I was saying, he gave no indication. Still I felt that I was pleasing him. He nodded vigorously at the paper, and I felt compelled to do as he asked of me.

  ‘Hoy Morn,’ I called in a high quavering voice. ‘Hoy Morn.’

  Schwass emitted a strange sound and this time it was chuckling.

  A woman’s voice shrieked one word, ‘Bastards’, and the door was flung open. Schwass slipped in like a swiftly-moving shadow, and the door slammed shut as quickly as it was opened.

  But for just an instant I had glimpsed the figure of a wild tousled woman, surrounded by gloom, in the doorway.

  As I turned up the passage I heard a voice from far away calling my name. It was my father.

  I ran down the passage and nearly collided with him at the end of it.

  ‘What are you doing girl?’ he whispered.

  ‘Nothing father. I was just talking to Mr Schwass.’

  He looked at me bleakly. ‘You’re lying. You can’t talk to Schwass.’

  ‘No, not exactly,’ I agreed. ‘But we sort of did.’ No one seemed very interested in my versions of events. I was just about ready to give up trying, certainly with my uncompromising father.

  ‘You have to keep away from that part of the house,’ he said.

  ‘I know father, but it’s easy to get lost.’

  ‘You’ll just have to try and do better,’ he said, as I trotted along at his side and out on to the balcony. ‘You haven’t been here a day and look how much trouble you’ve been in.’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I said.

  ‘You don’t think, do you?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ I repeated. There didn’t seem to be anything else to say.

  ‘Come on,’ he said, pointing me in the direction of his and my mother’s room. ‘You’re to get your sandals on, there’s prickles up at the property. You were stealing this morning weren’t you?’

  I looked at him blankly.

  ‘The fruit. You know you were. Why do you act like that with me? Do you hate me so much?’

  The words had come out in a rush, and as soon as he had said them I knew he regretted them.

  I shook my head, dumb with misery.

  ‘You shouldn’t steal the fruit,’ he said dully.

  ‘Did the Brigadier say that?’

  ‘He said he understood. It’s generous of him but it doesn’t make it any better.’

  ‘They’ve got plenty of it,’ I answered sullenly. ‘And I was hungry.’

  ‘Whose fault’s that?’

  I wanted to say ‘Yours’ but I didn’t. The impasse between him and me seemed to be getting worse.

  ‘I did apologise,’ I said, instead.

  He shrugged unhappily. ‘It’s important that we stay on living here. I just want you to know that. I don’t mean to be hard on you Emily. But – we’ve got nowhere else. Not just at present.’

  My mother was waiting with the sandals and after I had put them on, the three of us set off for our promised land. I watched both my parents, as if at a greater distance than I actually was, and longed to know what my mother was thinking.

  Four

  If the start of Emily’s life at Carlyle House had been inauspicious then Constance’s had been infinitely worse. She had sunk into bed after her labours on the first evening wondering how she would ever get up again, and she and Luke had hardly known how to comfort each other.

  Constance didn’t think of herself as a person with very high expectations or of great imagination, but rather as one with a quite steady belief in the future. It was true, that just lately there had been times when she had been uncertain, when her belief had fluttered like a rather tattered flag hoping for a good wind. But she put this down to the parting with her family. She told herself sternly that she had been tied to them for too long, that Luke had every right to want to make a new start somewhere well away from them. She guessed that he could not bear to fail where they could see him. So she followed him with a real faith.

  When she found that she was to be a cook and that a great deal was expected of her in return for her board and lodgings, she had been at first dismayed, but on reflection, it didn’t seem unfair. She just wished that she had had a little more warning. But if this was to be one of her contributions, she was simply going to have to get on with it.

  She was more worried about her daughter than herself. Funny how people thought two parents were so essential. She was sure that Emily was far happier with only one. It was a matter of time though. The child would come round. Only she needed help, and that meant Constance’s time too, and now she wasn’t going to have any.

  And there was the other child too. She hadn’t thought too much about that. She had deliberately chosen not to think. When she went north she would tell Luke and then she would allow herself the luxury of thinking. It seemed that she was to be denied that too. Or simply, it still didn’t bear thinking about.

  Yet despite all these gloomy beginnings, there was still the prospect of the land that she and Luke had thrown all their savings into.

  The sun was high and harsh, the heat an affliction. She must get sunhats for herself and Emily. Luke was still thin and didn’t look well to her, but at least the sun had relieved him of that awful pallor he had had when he came off the ship. The small of her back ached slightly as it did when her periods were due, only that couldn’t be so.

  Her heart lifted slightly. Perhaps her dates were wrong. But she knew they were not. It was more than two months. She pushed the unruly thought away again, and told herself to concentrate on the matter in hand.

  And she was excited. A patch of shade covered the road for a hundred or so yards and as she cooled off her spirits lifted higher. If only Luke would talk to her more about the place. But as they were so nearly there it didn’t really matter. She was content to walk at his side.

  ‘Wait for me,’ called Emily.

  Her parents turned together to wait for their daughter straggling along the dusty road. ‘We are a couple,’ thought Constance. ‘We’ve turned together and we’re watching our child together and I’m seeing her through his eyes as well as my own.’

  The child caught them up, and they walked on, only now Constance slipped her arm through her husband’s. He turned with a half-smile towards her. ‘It will be all right, we’re together,’ she thought though she did not say it aloud.

  There were wattles in flower along the roadside and a hectic orange flower which she was more used to people cultivating carefully in their gardens, growing wild amongst blue convolvulus. The colour never seemed to stop. Cicadas fiddled, a great cloud of butterflies erupted above a clump of flowers. She looked up to comment to Luke, but his face was set again.

  They finished the journey in silence, not because she was unhappy but because his face troubled her. It had to be her imagination. But if it wasn’t? Well. Whatever was worrying him would come out sooner or later she supposed. Better to leave him. Nothing must spoil this moment.

  ‘How much further?’ Emily asked.

  ‘We’re here,’ said Luke, in a strained voice.

  Constance had been absorbed with her concern for Luke and she had missed the last bend in the road. Now she looked up, and then around her.

  There was a long silence. ‘You mean – here?’ she said at last.

  ‘Yes,’ answered Luke.

  ‘This is our land?’

  ‘Yes.’

  ‘The land that Brigadier Barnsley sold to you?’

  ‘Yes’

  ‘But Luke –’

  ‘But Luke what?’ he said bitterly.

  ‘The fruit trees, the stream? Where are they?’

  For as she looked around her, she could see none of these things. ‘What have we come to?’ she said.

  ‘Constance.’ His voice was a plea for help. ‘I didn’t know it would be like this … I couldn’t tell you … tried to, wanted to tell you before you came, tried to sell it back … Constance forgive me.’

  The harsh voice had collapsed. Their world, her world, was collapsing. They were in a dry gully, covered mostly with scrubby gorse. It had been at the far end of one of the Brigadier’s properties and he had divided it off, and sold the tail of the land to the Freemans. It was not hard for Constance to guess his reason for selling it, for while the rest of the surrounding land bloomed so lushly, this did not, and presumably had resisted all efforts to make it do so in the past. To be sure, if one looked up the gully, there were a few straggling and unpruned fruit trees, but the creek bed was a fast-drying-out swamp hole which even the frogs had deserted. The sun struck like fire and even Emily, in her silence, betrayed her knowledge that they had been cheated and would never retrieve their money.

  There was a stand of gum trees to the far side of the gully, and they alone seemed to grow well, with fine straight silver trunks and blue-green leaves that rustled like silk. Near to these Luke had commenced the building of a one-roomed plank dwelling. Without approaching it further, it was obvious that Luke was no carpenter and that even the frame of it was giving him difficulty. It would be a long time before anyone could live in it.

  Constance stood trembling. This then, was the awful secret her husband had been hiding from her. She said, ‘It’s all right Luke. It’s all right – we’ll manage – oh my dear.’

  And he knew then, and she knew what she had always known, but never admitted even to herself, that she was the stronger one, and that she had started by looking after him and would go on looking after him.

  He saw her standing, thick-legged and sturdy, on the land, and guessed that she might know what to do when he had no answers.

  ‘We’ll get a cow perhaps. There’d be enough grazing for one or two.’

  ‘How d’you know?’ asked Luke.

  ‘I don’t know,’ she said, and it was true that she didn’t know how, but it did make sense. ‘If we got two we could raise a couple of pigs.’

  He hadn’t thought about that before. He had only seen them earning from the fruit trees, not surviving from the land. Closer to the house she stopped in a patch of shade thrown by the gums. ‘It’d be all right to try a few vegies here,’ she said. ‘Cooler, they wouldn’t scorch up. I should try and get them in quite soon.’

  He followed her, mutely at first, and yet as she talked and poked and pried around the place and saw possibilities, he felt some of the awful fear starting to dissolve. It was bad enough, but it might not be quite as bad as he thought.

  He said aloud then the one overwhelming fear that he had not been able to escape from, whichever way he turned. ‘You’re not going to go back then?’

  So that she looked at him with wonder and said, ‘I would never go back without you.’

  I couldn’t bear it any longer. My mother didn’t look at me. She was pouring all her love into my father, and I was excluded. Oddly, it was not so much this that was distressing me, even though I had been consumed with what obviously, looking back, was an acute attack of jealousy, but rather, their common grief. It overwhelmed me.

  I looked up at the tall smooth bark of the gum trees, and stroked it. There was a thick layer of leaves on the ground; a slippery, shiny carpet to skate upon. It was possible that I might be happy, here amongst the big trees. But nothing would ever be easy again. It seemed strange that a war had passed and I had not been uncomfortable in any way, but now I was facing a life which would be hard and difficult by comparison. I might even have had a fleeting interest in why people went away to fight a war if they were going to come back to hardship. Then I remembered the Barnsleys and the world the Brigadier had come back to, and I shuddered. I was sure that I would rather be here than at Carlyle House.

  ‘Emily.’ I heard my mother calling me.

  I walked back to them slowly. ‘I like it Dad,’ I said. It was not exactly a capitulation but it was the best I could offer. His eyes were calmer.

  ‘We’re going back now dear,’ said my mother.

  Again Carlyle House chilled me, even on that hot bright day.

  ‘Do we have to?’

  ‘Yes, of course,’ they both said almost simultaneously, and then looked at each other, surprising themselves.

  ‘I don’t want to go back,’ I said childishly, irrationally.

  ‘We have to,’ said my mother patiently. ‘There isn’t anywhere else. At least not until your father and I finish building the cottage. It won’t be that long.’

  As far as I was concerned I would have been content if they had pitched a tent in the paddock.

  ‘I’m frightened in that house.’

  ‘That’s a silly thing to say,’ she said.

  ‘I keep getting into trouble,’ I said, trying to scuff some leaves but they slid together under my sandal.

  ‘Then you must get used to their ways,’ said my father.

  I was silent. I knew I was being difficult, as they would say, and I knew that they were right to join together and try and calm me and persuade me to make life easier for them. I didn’t begrudge them that. I did begrudge going back there.

  My mother said, ‘Look, your dad’s got a lot of work to do this afternoon, but I’m sure he can spare some time to show you where you’re allowed to go –’

  ‘Or not go,’ I interrupted.

  ‘As the case may be,’ she said. ‘Now be sensible about things. You’ve got the summer before you. You might as well make the most of it.’

  So we turned and wended our way back down the road. The summer yawned endlessly before me. I wanted to please them but I felt alone. A heat haze had settled so that the colours of the trees and flowers seemed to converge and dance above the sere grass.

  As we neared the gates of Carlyle House, a man and a woman ambled towards us. The man was Dan Cape. The woman held a baby on her hip, and I guessed that it was Dan’s wife and their child.

  My father nodded without introducing us, but I heard him tell my mother that that was who it was. I couldn’t help but crane my head back to look at them. She looked like a perfectly ordinary young woman, thin, with rather pale skin and over-plucked eyebrows but neither plain nor pretty. As a couple they walked along companionably enough, touching slightly at the shoulders as they moved and I fancied that Dan smiled at the baby.

  ‘Don’t stare,’ said my mother. She started to light a cigarette but my father stopped her. I heard the word ‘fire’. The north was a tinderbox that year.

  Five

  One fine bright day followed another. The land beyond Carlyle House was bone dry but there was always water for the orchards. Apparently the river that ran below the Brigadier’s property was a deep and steady source and had never been known to run dry. The water was piped up from it and to one or two neighbouring properties. The China Set had had more than elevenses on the lawn in mind when they picked out their adjacent lands, although it was not till much later that I learned that the Set was what they called themselves, this colony from the East set up in splendid seclusion from the rest of the world.

 

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