Washerwoman's Dream Read online

  IT WAS A MONTH BEFORE Charles Steger could be located and ‘persuaded’ to return home to marry Winifred. There was a bitter little ceremony in St John’s Church of England, Dalby, which the groom’s family refused to attend. Wilfred Oaten and the wife of the presiding minister, the Reverend W Maitland Woods, were the only witnesses.

  Winifred wore a voluminous black dress her father had brought home ‘to hide her shame’. She hated it. It reminded her of the dress she had worn to her first dance at Jondaryan when everyone had laughed at her. Black was the colour of death and she wondered if this was an omen. She had often imagined her wedding dress and thought of something soft and light, a dress that floated around her slim figure, not this outsized black bombazine that made her look old and ugly.

  The minister had interviewed Winifred when her father brought her to meet him before the wedding. She had felt affronted when he said, ‘You have sinned, my daughter, like a woman taken in adultery. The child will be a constant reminder of your fall from grace, but like a loving father God will forgive you if you truly repent. Your father tells me that the father of the child is Charles Steger and that he will marry you. Will you promise to be an obedient wife, looking to your husband for guidance and being faithful to him?’

  Winifred had felt her cheeks burning with indignation. She hung her head, afraid that the tears filling her eyes would spill down her cheeks. She wanted to scream, ‘I did what I did because I was in love. I don’t want to get married to a man who doesn’t love me.’ Instead she remained silent, biting back the words, knowing that she had not been wanton, only weak. It was her father’s fault. It was he who had taken her from a good situation where she was respected and cared for, he who had gone away and left her alone. If he had looked after her properly this would never have happened.

  When the minister asked her age, her father had answered for her. ‘Nineteen. Old enough to be married.’ Lying to suit himself. The truth was that Winifred was barely seventeen and her bridegroom twenty-eight when she was married off on 7 December 1899.

  Winifred had not seen Charles for months and when he came and stood beside her at the altar she averted her gaze, wondering whether he still cared for her or whether he was angry. But when he took her hand in his and said, ‘With this ring I thee wed,’ and she felt the warmth of his large work-roughened hand, she raised her eyes. He returned her gaze but there was no love there, only a look of undisguised contempt. A wave of nausea swept over her and she thought she was going to faint, until the minister’s wife put her arm around her shoulders and led her into the vestry where she was able to rest for a few minutes while they signed the register.

  Outside the church her father gave her a perfunctory peck on the cheek. ‘Well that’s done and you’re a married woman. Good luck in your new life.’ He pointed to a bank of dark clouds. ‘I’d best be getting home. If the creek rises I might be stuck.’ He nodded to Charles. ‘See that you take good care of my daughter.’

  As Wilfred turned to leave, Winifred took him by the arm. ‘Can’t I come home with you?’

  ‘Don’t be so stupid. You’re a married woman now. Your home is with your husband,’ and he ran to his sulky, climbed in and called to his horse, which took off down the main street at a smart trot.

  Winifred stared after him and then back at Charles, who was leaning on the fence. ‘I don’t want to get a soaking, I’m off. Suit yourself whether you come or not,’ and he started to walk towards the waggon.

  She followed him clumsily, knowing she had no choice. He pushed her up into the waggon and leapt up himself, then drove off hard over the unmade road, slashing the horses with his whip. At each blow she flinched, certain that the anger was directed at her.

  They reached the farm and the shelter of the house as the storm broke. The family was already seated at the table when Charles led his bride into the dining room. Thunder rumbled and sheets of vivid lightning lit up the little room and the paddocks until it looked like daylight.

  Winifred was conscious of Charles’s mother, who looked at her coldly and waved her towards a long wooden form that ran the length of the table. She sat down clumsily, supporting her back with both hands, and lowered her eyes, biting back the tears. Someone pushed a plate in front of her with some cold sausage and a slice of black bread. She felt she would choke if she tried to eat. The noise of rain on the iron roof drowned out all other sounds. No one spoke.

  When the meal was over the women rose and carried the plates and food into the kitchen while the men stood in the doorway smoking, all except Charles who strode out into the yard and rode off on his horse.

  The storm passed and the men went outside. Winifred could hear them talking. She walked to the door. It was cooler now. The rain had brought relief from the heat. It was a black night and there were no stars. She stood breathing in the smell of wet earth and listening to frogs croaking. Then she returned to the table and sat alone until Charles’s sister Kate came into the room carrying a lighted lamp.

  ‘Mutter said to bring in your things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘Your linen … your blankets … your cups and saucers.’

  ‘I have no things. Only my clothes.’ Winifred’s voice was barely audible and she wondered if Charles’s sister had understood, but then she heard her voice in the kitchen. ‘She has no things, only what she is wearing. These dom Britishers. We work hard. That man … her father … is feckless. His fences fall down, his crops fail and now he has wished his daughter on us and he sends her with nothing … Mein Gott, how do we know Charles is die vater of her kind? It could be anyone’s.’

  The family prepared for bed and the house became quiet and all the while Winifred sat there. Then finally she was forced by her bladder, to stumble out to the privy in the backyard, feeling her way over the wet path until her eyes became accustomed to the light. She was sitting on the back doorstep when Charles rode in. He unharnessed his horse and hobbled it and almost fell over Winifred. ‘Gott im himmel! What are you doing out here?’

  ‘I didn’t know where to go … I have no blankets.’

  He helped her to her feet and led her inside to where a length of hessian hung in a corner by the stove. He moved aside the curtain to reveal a stretcher. ‘This is where I sleep when I’m home. You can have the bed.’

  ‘But where will you sleep?’

  He took one of the blankets and spread it on the floor, then lay down. ‘There’s a slab hut … It’s where Mutter and Vater lived when they first came from Germany. Vater says we can have it.’ Then he turned over, grunted a couple of times and began to snore.

  Winifred lay on the narrow bed, trying to get comfortable and listening to the night noises. The frogs were still croaking and there were mosquitoes buzzing, and somewhere inside a bed creaked. She heard the murmur of voices but couldn’t make out what they were saying. There was a clock ticking on a shelf in the kitchen and outside a cow was bellowing. She recognised the sound from the time she had been at MrsSmith’s. It meant that the cow needed a bull. She fell asleep some hours later and woke to hear a rooster crowing in the yard.

  It took her a few moments to realise where she was and then she looked down to where Charles had been sleeping. His blanket had been folded and there was no sign of him. She pulled on her black dress and boots and stepped into the kitchen. The table was set for breakfast and the kettle was boiling on the stove. She realised how hungry she was and cut a piece off a loaf of black bread, eating it as she walked to the door and out into the yard. There she saw Charles’s sisters cleaning out the dairy, with the cows ambling back to the paddock, while Vater Carl was harnessing the horse to the waggon, which was filled with gleaming milk cans.

  Winifred saw him looking at her, then he said something to his daughters in German and the young wife picked out the words ‘dom Britisher’.

  As Carl Steger drove out of the yard, the milk cans rattling in the waggon, Kate called out to Winifred, ‘Vater said, “Gott im himmel, what have we
done to deserve this dom Britisher. We work hard … dom Britishers, their fences fall down and their cows go unmilked.” Vater says, “In this house you only eat if you work.” ’ She pointed to Winifred’s stomach, ‘Look at you, you’re useless.’ And she picked up a pail of milk and carried it into the house.

  Winifred didn’t reply. She realised, as if for the first time, that this would be her life from now on, living with Charles’s family on a small block of land with neighbours so close that if you walked to the end paddock you could throw a stone onto the roof of the next house. She wondered how long her new family would go on hating her and whether she would ever be accepted.

  Her husband was nowhere to be seen. She had no idea whether he worked on the farm or for someone else and there was no one to ask. She could feel the child kicking in her womb and she put her hand on her stomach, thinking that it was all her own fault. She had believed Charles when he said he loved her. Now she was certain that he hated her because her father had made him marry her. And yet he had treated her with some kindness, letting her sleep in his bed. Perhaps when they moved into their own place things would be better.

  And then Charles’s mother emerged from the privy, saying, ‘Guten morgen. There’s no time to stand and stare.’ She gave Winifred a hard look. ‘After frühstück you can make das brot. You do know how to make das brot?’

  Winifred looked at her, puzzled. ‘I’m not sure what das brot is.’

  Barbara made a gesture of impatience. ‘Das brot … das bread.’

  Winifred nodded.

  ‘Gut,’ and the older woman went into the kitchen while Winifred followed. She handed her an apron, then pointed to the table. ‘Sit. Last nacht you took no food. You must eat … for the kind.’ She lifted a piece of smoked bacon from the meat safe and cut off a slice. ‘Here … it is gut mit brot. After go to the dairy and get a cup of milk. Once das brot is set you can feed the fowls and there’s whey to give to the pigs.’

  ‘What shall I call you?’ Winifred asked.

  ‘Mutter Barbara,’ she said as she bustled off to make the beds and tidy the house, while Winifred sat in the kitchen with an aching back, hardly able to walk for the pain in her legs, knowing that there was no chance of escape until after the child was born. She was terrified of what lay ahead and yet afraid to ask questions because she knew she was only there on sufferance. It was as if she had wished herself on Charles and that it was all her fault that she was having a child. She was married to the man she had once thought she loved and it was nothing like she had imagined.

  Later, with the bread set to rise, she went out into the yard where Vater Carl had come rattling back from the cheese factory with the whey from the separated milk. She gazed helplessly at the heavy buckets, knowing it was beyond her strength to lift them from the cart or carry them over to the pigsty.

  As Winifred stood there without speaking, Vater glared at her and with a bucket in each hand went striding across to the pigs. She thought about unharnessing the horse and putting it in the stable, but even that was too much effort. All she wanted to do was to lie down somewhere quiet on her own.

  She made her way across the paddock to where she could see a tumbledown house of iron and slabs almost on the border of the farm next door. The door was hanging on one hinge, and she pushed it open. She could tell by the cobwebs, the thick layer of dust on the furniture and the grass growing on the dirt floor that it had been a long while since it had been lived in.

  There was a broom in the corner and she picked it up and began to sweep the dust off the furniture. As she worked, she made up her mind that she would move in and help herself to what she needed from her in-laws’ place. Even if they hated her she had a right to her food and keep, and if she was out of sight they might not resent her so much. At least she would have privacy and somewhere to have her child, and perhaps when things had settled down Charles might forgive her. She would ask him to build her a fowl run. She could sell the eggs and, once the birth was over, start a vegetable garden and make herself independent.

  She remembered the bread and returned to the kitchen. She lifted the damp cloth with which she had covered the dough and punched it down, putting it by the stove so that it could rise again before she cooked it. Then she took a dipper of water and found a bundle of old rags and went back to the slab hut. There she wiped the furniture, then sprinkled the water that was left onto the floor before sweeping it. She thought that perhaps she might find some cornsacks in the barn, which she could unpick and lay over the dirt floor.

  The hut had two rooms with threadbare hessian to cover the window openings. There was a stretcher in the bedroom made of wire netting tied to four posts sunk into the ground. She would have to gather some bracken fern from the creek to make a mattress. In the kitchen there was an old stove and a table with one leg missing, which was supported by an upturned wooden box. Boxes also served as chairs. On a shelf over the stove was a candlestick with a stub of a candle, plus a black-iron pot and pan, a cracked teapot and some tin mugs. An old iron tank with a door cut in its side served as a toilet. Remembering how she and her father had slept in the prickly pear when they first arrived in Australia, she thought she could live here very well. The main thing was to get some food.

  Winifred returned to the main house and put the bread in the oven. She had opened the pantry and was looking around to see what she could find to take back to the hut when Mutter Barbara came into the kitchen. ‘Make the tea,’ she said. ‘The cows will be coming in from the paddock and there’s milking to be done.’

  The family sat around the long table drinking tea with slices of Mutter Barbara’s gingerbread. Vater Carl drank noisily and he and his wife carried on a conversation in German. The daughters were silent the whole while, eating quickly before returning to the milking shed. Winifred carried the dirty cups and plates to the sink, waited until her mother- and father-in-law had finished and then washed up.

  She was feeling unbelievably tired, as well as completely out of place in the household, so she went outside and picked her way through the long grass to the little hut, where she lay down on the makeshift bed. It was here Charles found her when he returned from a day spent haymaking on a neighbour’s farm. ‘Mutter said you must come and eat.’

  ‘I want to stay here,’ Winifred replied. ‘They all hate me.’

  ‘You must eat.’ He took her by the arm and pulled her off the bed, then, with his arm around her waist, forced her back to his parents’ house.

  That night they returned to the hut with bread, eggs, tea and sugar and the blankets from Charles’s bed. When he blew out the candle he tried to take her in his arms, but she moved away, turning her back to him, and he cursed under his breath. Later she heard him rise and the sound of his horse as he cantered out the gate. She slept fitfully, plagued by mosquitoes and unable to get comfortable on the wire netting. Towards morning she heard Charles returning and pretended to be asleep when he climbed into bed. But he made no attempt to touch her this time and lay with his back to her. Later she heard him snoring.

  * * *

  It had been a long, hot summer and Winifred found the last few weeks of her pregnancy almost unbearable. Her legs were swollen and she had trouble turning over in bed. Her one consolation was that she did not have to face the undisguised hostility of Charles’s family. While she remained in her own little place she felt safe. Though she knew she would soon give birth, she did not dwell on it, as if she was somehow immune from the pain and suffering it would involve.

  Charles worked away but came home most nights. Winifred gathered kindling, chopped wood, fetched water and made bread as she had done for her father. There was always fresh milk and eggs, and sometimes a cabbage or a few carrots from the vegetable patch by the main homestead. She did not ask permission but took what she needed as being her right. Charles had told her that he received no payment for working for his father, only payment in kind. If he wanted money he had to work away from the farm, and even then his father ex
pected him to pay money into the household.

  Charles was away harvesting and did not return home the night Winifred went into labour. The pain woke her and she lit a candle and lay there wondering how she could cope on her own. She had hoped Charles would be here to help. Now she felt clammy and afraid, knowing nothing about childbirth except what she had heard in whispered conversations.

  Mutter Barbara found her the next morning when she brought her a jug of milk. She lifted up the young wife’s nightgown and felt her stomach, then told her to get up and walk around.

  It was three days before Winifred gave birth — three days in which she screamed in agony, while her mother-in-law cursed her for bringing disgrace to the family. Then on 22 February 1900 a son was born. Mutter Barbara wrapped him in a shawl and took him to show her husband.

  Charles paid her a brief visit while she was lying in. She thought he seemed pleased when she showed him his son, but he did not offer to hold him. Mutter Barbara had already told her that the child was to be called Charles. It did not worry Winifred as long as his second name was Wilfred after her father, and she filled in the paper her husband had brought so that the child’s birth could be registered. To avoid confusion with his father, the child was to be known as Fred.

  Winifred’s experience with babies was limited to the few weeks she had spent helping Mrs Smith. She had watched her breastfeeding and once Winifred began to hold the child to her breast, her milk began to flow. Holding the small bundle in her arms, she was overwhelmed with joy. She would kiss each perfectly formed pink finger and lay the hands on her breast while she held him against her shoulder to try and bring up his wind as she had seen Mrs Smith do.

  Charles stayed one night, going out as soon as they had eaten some cold sausage and sauerkraut his mother had brought over. He returned later and Winifred heard him tripping up the steps. She sat up in bed, saying, ‘Ssshhh, don’t wake the baby.’ Ignoring her, he dropped his boots one by one on the floor, spread his blanket by the stove and lay down. He was breathing heavily and began to grunt and toss and turn in his sleep, and she sensed he had been drinking. Winifred lay awake in the dark. The baby was in bed beside her and she listened to his gentle breathing, reaching out to touch his face to make sure he was warm. She could hear a noise on the roof and wondered if it was a bird or a rat, or even a snake. She knew there were snakes around. She had climbed into the loft in the barn to fill a bag of potatoes one day when she saw a huge snake curled up. ‘It’s harmless,’ Vater Carl had said when she went running out of the barn, her baby on her hip and her bag of potatoes in the other hand. ‘They kill the rats.’ But Winifred had been frightened. Now she was uneasy, remembering a picture she had seen of a python that had swallowed a goat whole. She thought that if a snake could swallow a young goat, it could swallow a baby. She wondered if she should wake Charles but she was afraid to disturb him in case he became angry.