Washerwoman's Dream Page 12

  ‘Wait.’ Mrs Jackson put her hand on the girl’s arm. ‘Things will change.’

  The girl stared at her with a feeling of alarm, wondering if they were planning to send her away. She relaxed again when Mrs Jackson said, ‘You won’t have so much time to help with the pies. The old man … well … he’s been shut away … but my husband worries. He wants the children to know their grandfather … He had an accident, his horse bolted and he got thrown on his head. His brains is a bit addled … Mr Jackson feels that it ain’t right to leave his father with mad folks … Do you understand?’

  Winifred wasn’t sure what Mrs Jackson meant but thought that perhaps it would be nice for the children to have an older person around. She’d never known her grandparents.

  When he arrived late that night with Mr Jackson the children were still awake, peering over the stairs to catch a glimpse. Their father saw them and called, ‘Go to bed, children, your mother will be up shortly. Grandpa is tired.’

  Winifred was still up and waited in the kitchen until Mrs Jackson had greeted her father-in-law. When she returned she seemed agitated. ‘You go to bed, dear. Grandpa’s not himself … I’ll take him a cup of tea once he’s in bed. A good night’s sleep will probably fix him.’

  For the first few days Grandpa, as everyone called him, seemed content to sit by the kitchen stove where it was warm, leaving Winifred free to help with the baking. The children accepted the fact that he was ill and regarded him curiously when he muttered to himself, sometimes getting angry and throwing punches in the air at an imaginary assailant. Other times he sat in silence, threading his fingers through his beard, staring into the distance.

  He took his meals with the family, but the minute his meal was put before him he would cram it into his mouth with both hands, before Mrs Jackson had a chance to sit down and say, ‘Lord, we ask you to bless our food.’ As soon as he had finished, he would give a furtive look around and return to his seat by the stove.

  Once five-year-old Joshua said, ‘Grandpa has got bad manners.’ Winifred flinched when Mrs Jackson picked up the serving spoon and rapped him hard across the knuckles, and then sent him crying to his room. She had never seen Mrs Jackson angry before, certain that it was the old man who was the problem. The next day the children were quiet and hurried off to school, keeping well away from their grandfather.

  After breakfast Mrs Jackson told Winifred to take the old man for a walk, saying, ‘A change of scenery will do him good.’

  Reluctantly the girl obeyed, leading him by the hand as they walked down the street. At the blacksmith’s shop the old man broke free and startled one of the horses waiting to be shod, poking it with his walking stick. It reared up and lashed out, kicking a bucket of nails into the fire and narrowly missing the smithy, who leapt to one side, yelling out, ‘Bejeasus! What the hell!’ But the old man had already darted off, with Winifred in hot pursuit. She found him around the corner of the next street sitting in the gutter with a vacant look in his eye.

  For the next two weeks he led her a merry dance, walking along the railway line, stopping to watch the fettlers at work, sometimes poking them with his stick and then running away until he had to stop because he was out of breath. He seemed to be aware that Winifred was following him and tried to give her the slip, darting into doorways, around corners, running around the sides of houses, sometimes emerging with a shirt on the end of his walking stick before he took off again. All Winifred could do was to leave the garment on the fence and run after him.

  When they returned home at night she was almost too tired to eat, later lying awake wondering how much longer she could continue. The job she had loved with Jezebel and the pie-making had changed into a battle with an old man who seemed to have no sense of right or wrong … Sometimes she wondered if he knew who he was.

  She was upstairs resting one afternoon after a particularly trying day with the old man. He had insisted on walking between the railway tracks, kicking the heads off the wildflowers that had sprung up between the lines, then he suddenly raised his stick as if to hit her. She jumped back and a group of fettlers who were boiling their billy rushed to her aid, taking the stick away and sitting the old man down beside the fire, sharing their bread and cheese with him and Winifred. By the time he had rested and had a cup of tea he had quietened down, but it was Winifred who carried the walking stick as they made their way back to the bakery.

  She had tried to explain everything to Mrs Jackson, but she did not seem to understand. ‘It’s all right, he’s harmless, he wouldn’t hurt a fly. Just be careful.’

  ‘But he knows I follow him. He hides all the time,’ said Winifred as she burst into tears.

  The next day Mrs Jackson kept the old man home and Winifred resumed her old duties, helping with the pie-making, grooming Jezebel and cleaning the pie-cart. Things were quiet until the children returned home from school and she heard Joshua screaming. Mr Jackson ran into the kitchen where he found his father holding the child over the fuel stove. ‘It’s cold … it’s cold,’ was all the old man could say when they took the child from him.

  Winifred sensed the tension in the air as they ate their supper. Mr Jackson had gone out with the pie-cart. Instead of their usual chatter, the children were silent, watching their grandfather as he gulped down a plate of cold mutton with pickles. Instead of eating his pink blancmange he gathered it up in his hands and smeared it over his bald head.

  Mrs Jackson picked up a damp cloth and wiped the old man down, sighing, ‘Oh Grandpa, what are we going to do with you?’

  When Mrs Jackson took the children up to bed, Winifred went with her rather than stay alone in the kitchen with the old man, waiting until Mrs Jackson went downstairs again so that she could help with the washing-up. While Winifred wiped the dishes Mrs Jackson put the old man to bed, pushing a chair against the door. ‘In case he wanders in the night … we’ll hear him. I’ll have to get my husband to put a bolt on the outside of the door. I fear he’s quite mad. I tried to take his walking stick but he got angry. I thought he was going to hit me. I’m afraid he might hurt one of the children.’

  Winifred’s nerves were on edge when she went to bed. Mr Jackson was still out and she lay awake straining her ears. Boards creaked, a possum ran across the roof, a breeze stirred the leaves on the gum tree beside the stable. She was still awake when the horse and cart returned. She heard the jingle of the harness as Mr Jackson unsaddled the horse and the sound of him shutting the stable door, then coming into the house and up the stairs into the room he shared with Mrs Jackson, closing the door softly behind him.

  When the moon rose and a swathe of moonlight cut across the room, she was still awake, listening intently for noises from downstairs, afraid to go to sleep, imagining that at any moment she would hear the sound of the chair crashing to the floor. Next the handle on her door would turn and the old man would come in, brandishing his walking stick.

  She knew there was no way she could spend another night in the house with the old man. Even if she survived the night she would still be expected to take him out the next day. The fettlers had saved her once. But what if there were no fettlers? He might kill her.

  Outside, the yard was bathed in moonlight. She looked out at the gum tree, wondering if she could get from the windowsill onto the roof of the stable and then climb down the tree’s branches without being hurt.

  She rose stealthily, afraid to make a noise. Her clothes were on a chair beside the bed and she tied them into a bundle in her blanket. Then she opened the window and climbed onto the windowsill. Holding her bundle in one hand and her boots in the other, she jumped onto the roof of the stable, terrified that the noise might wake up the household. She listened for a few moments. Except for Jezebel stirring in her stable, all was quiet. Dropping her boots and bundle to the ground, she climbed down the gum tree.

  The moon had gone under a cloud and it was dark in the yard. Winifred leaned against the stable door and whispered, ‘Goodbye, Jezebel. I’ll miss you. I use
d to like it here … but not any more.’

  She could hear the rumble of the sanitary cart in the distance and knew it must be close to morning. She took a dress out of her bundle and pulled it over her nightgown and put on her stockings and boots. Then quickly, before the clouds parted and the moon came out again, she went out the front gate and began to run as fast as she could until she had turned the corner and was out of sight of the house.

  10

  HOMECOMING

  WILFRED WOKE ONE MORNING to hear his daughter’s voice calling. At first he thought he must be dreaming, but then he rose and opened the door to find her crouched on the doorstep, crying hysterically. It was hours before he could piece together the story of her escape.

  ‘It was still dark when I got to the station … I waited and caught the milk train. I only had four shillings and twopence and that only took me to Oakey Creek … and then … and then I had to walk … A man at the station told me it was eighteen miles. I had nothing to eat and only drinks of water from the creek. When I got tired I lay down by the side of the road. And this morning I saw the barn with the red cow painted on the side that you told me about and knew I was nearly home.’

  Her father had mixed feelings about her return, but just the same he bathed her feet, which were blistered from the long walk, made her a cup of tea and some toast with jam and put her to bed.

  Later, as she lay there watching her father shave, she asked, ‘Are you angry with me?’ she asked.

  He put down his razor and, wiping the lather off his face with a towel, came and stood beside her. ‘No, not angry. It’s inconvenient, that’s all. I don’t come home every night — my work takes me all over the place. You were lucky to find me here. Today I’m starting a new job near Jondaryan. You’ll have to look to yourself. I’ll be late home … Don’t worry, I’ll bring a tin of beans. We can eat that for supper.’

  Then, in a rare gesture of affection, he put out his hand and stroked her hair. ‘It’ll be nice having someone here at night. Sometimes when I’m on my own I find myself talking to the mice in the chimney … I hear them chittering and chattering away and imagine that they’re talking about me, wondering how soon I’ll be asleep so that they can come into the kitchen and raid the flourbag. I warn them I’ve set traps, but it doesn’t seem to make any difference.’ He laughed and she found herself laughing with him.

  He bent and kissed her on the forehead and tucked the blanket around her. ‘Welcome home. I’ve missed you.’

  She slept again for a few hours until the heat of the day woke her. It took a few minutes to realise where she was as she gazed around the tin walls of the hut with holes cut out for windows. Sheets of bark secured to the iron with a strip of rawhide served as shutters, which were propped open with a length of sapling. There was a constant stream of flies in and out of the openings.

  Winifred rose and walked to the door. Looking out, she saw a small patch of corn with a flock of cockatoos like large white flowers perched on the top of the cornstalks which swayed under their weight.

  They were stripping the ripening cobs of corn and she ran towards them in her nightgown, waving a stick she picked up from the woodheap and calling, ‘Shoo! Shoo!’ The birds flew off in a cloud, circling overhead and squawking before settling on a tall gum tree.

  Winifred picked up the cobs which had fallen to the ground, heaped them into the front of her nightgown and carried them inside, wondering where to put them. If she put them on the table the mice would eat them. She remembered seeing the meat safe hanging from a tree by the door and she piled the corn into this and fastened the wire door.

  The kettle was half full of water; she poured a little into a tin dish and washed herself, then dressed. She pulled on her boots which were scuffed, the soles worn thin from the long hard walk from Oakey Creek. She wondered briefly whether she should try to go barefoot and keep her boots for best, but the ground outside was stony and there was a nest of ants by the door, and she knew there could be snakes in the long grass that grew around the corn patch. If her boots wore out she would ask her father to buy her new ones.

  She went outside again and chased off the cockatoos that had returned to the corn patch. She wasn’t sure of the time but thought it must be the middle of the day because the sun was almost directly overhead. She lit the fire and hung the iron pot over it to boil up a few corncobs, which she ate for lunch. There was no bread and after she had washed her plate and cleaned up the scraps from her meal she looked around for the flourbag.

  She found it standing in an empty wooden cask which had a piece of bark held down with a large stone as a lid. She jumped back when she saw a mousetrap alongside with a dead mouse in it. She picked up the trap and threw it out the window. The next time she went outside she saw that the body was alive with large ants, and by evening there was nothing left except the skeleton.

  That afternoon Winifred busied herself making a loaf of bread, mixing sugar and yeast from a bottle over the stove, absorbed as she kneaded the dough, covering it with a cloth once it was in the breadtin, smiling when she saw how it had risen. She punched it down and watched it rise again before placing it in the camp oven with hot coals in the lid, imagining her father’s face when he saw the fresh bread on the table.

  While it cooked she washed two empty flourbags which she hung to dry on the roof of the hut and then unpicked them and sewed them together to make a cloth for the table. There were some empty cornsacks in the corner which she also unpicked, before spreading them over the dirt floor as she had seen Aunt Lydia do. She thought about the pink shaded lamp and the Spanish silk shawls that Aunt Lydia had used to decorate their other house, but Winifred had only her white woollen shawl, and she needed that to keep her warm. And the only lamp was a little kerosene one with a clear glass cover and a discoloured brass base. Later she walked along the side of the road gathering yellow daisies which she placed in an empty pickle bottle in the centre of the table.

  She was so absorbed in her efforts to improve the look of the tin hut, as well as trying to keep the cockatoos out of the corn, that she forgot all about the bread until she smelt it burning. She hastened to take the lid off the camp oven to find the bread had caught on the bottom. She felt like crying but scraped it with a knife and, wrapping it in a cloth, put it on the table.

  She lit the lamp as the light faded outside and sat by the table waiting for her father until she heard the sound of his horse. With the lamp in her hand she walked to the fence where she undid the sliprail to let the sulky through.

  Later, as they sat eating their meal of hot beans on bread, she saw her father glance at the floor. ‘Cornsacks are worth money,’ he said. ‘I need them to store the corn in so that I can send it to be milled.’

  ‘There were cockatoos. I tried to shoo them away but they kept on coming back. I picked up the cobs and put them in the meat safe.’

  Her father jumped to his feet and, grabbing the lantern, ran outside where he saw the bruised and broken crop of corn. Winifred followed him out into the night. The moon was rising over the Great Dividing Range and she stood there watching it until her father picked up a length of wood and went crashing through the corn patch, where she could hear squeaking noises.

  ‘Hell and damnation. This country will be the death of me … I lost the potato crop to the floods, but I thought … I hoped … that with the ground moist and the warmth of the sun … Is it too much to ask for a bit of corn that we can send to the mill and pay off the money we owe the storekeeper and have enough left to bake a few loaves of bread? It’s hopeless. If it’s not the cockatoos, it’s the wallabies or the rats and mice.’

  ‘I picked up what corn I could and put it in the meat safe away from the mice,’ Winifred told him again.

  ‘Well tomorrow you’d better pick what’s left. I’ll bring home something to scrape the corn off the cobs. There won’t be enough to send to the mill. You’ll have to do it with a hand mill. It’s slow but you haven’t got anything else to do. You’d b
est get to bed now. You’ll have your work cut out tomorrow picking up what’s left after the rats and mice have finished.’

  Winifred’s days fell into a pattern. She tried to keep the house clean, shaking the cornsacks she had used as floor coverings outside, emptying the dregs of the billy can onto the dirt to keep down the dust. There was wood to collect for the fire and she became adept at using an axe to split it into kindling. And she learned how to separate the corn from the cob and then crush the grain to make a coarse meal.

  In the afternoons when Cobb and Co came by she would hang over the front fence to wave to the passengers. She was there one day when a sheet of newsprint flew from the upper deck of the coach and she ran out into the road to pick it up. It was the front and back pages of a magazine called Life, published by Shaw Fitchett, and she leaned on the fence reading the homely little stories about life in Australia. While she was setting the bread to rise she thought about what she had read and decided she could write just as well.

  She had no proper writing paper, only a sheet of brown paper, and she used a flat carpenter’s pencil to write her story about an imaginary incident when she was stung by a bee and applied a touch of the blue-bag as a remedy. The next time Cobb and Co came along the road she stopped the coach and asked the driver to post her letter to the publishers.

  Two months later she received a copy of the magazine with her story in it with the title of ‘A Rough Diamond’ and a cheque for one pound. Her father was astonished when she showed him her story and his eyes glinted at the sight of the cheque. ‘This will pay off what we owe the storekeeper,’ and he put it in the empty bottle where he kept a few loose coins.

  At his words her heart gave a sickening lurch and she turned on him. ‘I have nothing, no clothes that fit, no boots. I work hard all day cleaning this place.’ She waved her arms around the squalid tin hut. ‘When I was in Drayton I was well fed and lived in a proper house with sheets, and now … and now, when I get some money to buy myself a few things, you take it.’ She burst into tears and ran out into the night.