Washerwoman's Dream Read online

  She lay awake for a long while worrying, afraid to sleep. Then she thought about the wedding and how she had stood at the altar crying, feeling ashamed in her black dress. And then a feeling of guilt possessed her as she remembered how she had prayed that her baby would go away. And now here he was, her son, a being created within her own body, something of herself to love and to love her in return. Charles might be the father, but the child was hers. No one could take him from her. And thinking of this, she fell asleep.

  It was still dark when the baby woke and began to cry. Winifred reached over and put him to her breast. As her eyes became accustomed to the light she saw Charles had already left for the harvest and a feeling of angst gripped her. She knew he had not forgiven her.

  She did not know how she could endure living with a man who did not care for her, and she made up her mind that once her baby was old enough she would find somewhere else to go, somewhere she could have her child with her.

  But the child was fractious and cried a lot, so that the young mother had little sleep. This, combined with being alone with no one she could talk to, sent her into a deep depression. Long after her three-week lying-in period had finished, she still spent her days in bed with the baby by her side, breastfeeding him when he woke, unable to do anything but weep.

  When Mutter Barbara came bustling into the hut as she did each day and took the child without asking, Winifred became anxious, fearing that Mutter Barbara planned to keep the child and send her back to her father. Then one day she plucked up courage to say, ‘I don’t want you to take my baby away.’

  Mutter Barbara’s eyes flashed. ‘Mein Gott, I have done everything to help you, you ungrateful girl. Do you think I wanted this? But this is Charles’s child and I have to see that he is cared for.’ She looked around the little hut with its layers of dust, the unwashed mugs, the food scraps. ‘This place is like a pigsty. When I had my kinder I did not lie around crying, there was work and more work, all day work, and yet I went on … I had ten kinder and you have only one.’ And she picked up the child and took him over to the main house.

  Though Winifred tried to talk to the midwife, Mrs Christerson, when she came to examine her six weeks after the birth, she could not make her understand. Mrs Christerson made Winifred get dressed, then boiled the kettle for tea and produced a Dundee cake she had made. ‘Your bairn is bonnie,’ she said as she smiled at the baby asleep in a makeshift cradle made from an empty butter box. ‘Ye musna fash yourself, lassie … Ye must pull yourself together and take good care of the wee babe. Bairns are a gift from God. Next time it won’t be so hard.’

  The thought of having another child appalled Winifred but she kept quiet, knowing that it was unlikely because of the way Charles felt about her. She did not tell the midwife that she planned to leave as soon as she could. She wondered if she could go back to her father, but he had not been near her or sent a message since the wedding. She wondered if he even knew about the baby, and if he did, would he care enough to come and see his new grandson? Though she was accustomed to his indifference she had always felt that deep down he loved her.

  As the weeks went by her mood changed. Fred would smile at her and make baby noises, and as she walked around the yard holding him in her arms she would point out a crow on a fence post or a rabbit scurrying into the long grass, saying ‘moo’ when they saw a cow. On a warm night she would stand near the door and look at the vast expanse of star-filled sky that arched overhead and say, ‘God is out there somewhere, small one. He will watch over us.’ And she would kiss the baby on the top of his head.

  She no longer felt quite so lonely. Now when Mutter Barbara came to take little Fred over to the main house she would let him go, walking over later to carry him home. She sensed that the old woman’s mood had softened towards her and Vater Carl would say, ‘Guten morgen,’ when she went to the dairy to collect the milk.

  But the sisters were still hostile and scarcely spoke to her. She knew it was because she did not help with the milking or the butter-making. Once she heard Kate complaining to Vater Carl about her taking the milk. He replied sharply, ‘It’s not for her. It is for die kind. In a few years he will be big enough to help with the milking. Let her have the milk.’

  Hearing this, Winifred smiled to herself, wondering what they would say if she told them she and Fred would be far away by then.

  It was the quiet moments that Winifred cherished. She would spend them immersed in writing stories, thinking that if she could sell some she could begin to save money until she had enough to leave Charles. As soon as she heard Mutter Barbara talking to Fred as she carried him across the paddock she’d rise hurriedly and hide the paper and pencil, throw a cloth over the dirty plates and mugs and pull the covers over the bed. By the time Mutter Barbara arrived at the door with the child, Winifred would be sitting at the table with a sheet of newspaper on it to catch the potato peelings as she prepared a simple meal.

  * * *

  Charles arrived unannounced in May when Fred was five months old. Winifred looked out the front door when she heard the sound of a horse and saw him dismount to open the gate. He waved to her and led his horse over to her. He flung his swag on the ground at her feet, saying, ‘There’s some washing to do,’ and continued towards the stable.

  Winifred picked up the bundle and emptied it onto the ground, extracting some dirty shirts, socks and a pair of trousers. Tomorrow she would light a fire and boil them up, and if it was windy she would be able to get them dry and ironed. She had no idea how long he intended to stay but thought she would wait until she was told. She gathered some kindling and went into the kitchen to stoke up the stove so she could put the kettle on. It was boiling when Charles returned and he sat at the table while she made the tea and produced a loaf of bread and a piece of cheese, which he ate rapidly. She sat there watching in silence, waiting for him to speak.

  ‘I was hungry,’ he said when he finally pushed his chair back from the table and stood up, filling his pipe as he walked to the door. ‘Where’s my son?’

  ‘With your mother.’

  ‘Work finally cut out. I’ve been weeks on the road. It was a good harvest. And I picked up some fencing work. Helped clear some land. I’ve been all over. Still, there’s plenty to do here. I promised Vater I’d fix the fences. And there’s a paddock to plough for a winter crop.’ He went to the door. ‘I’ll go and see Mutter.’

  ‘Bring Fred when you come,’ she called and watched him stroll across the paddock towards the house.

  As she filled the round tub with water and soaped his dirty clothes before putting them in to soak, turning the socks inside out and looking in the pockets of a pair of work trousers to make sure they were empty, she thought about his return. It would be the first time they had really been alone together since Fred’s birth. She wondered if he would sleep on the floor as he had last time, or whether he would climb into bed beside her and try to take her in his arms. The thought alarmed her. She was still breastfeeding and wondered if she could use that as an excuse.

  As she rubbed the clothes on her washboard she had a sudden memory of being at the Cut with Mrs Watkins and seeing a woman selling herrings. A young ragamuffin had been running along beside her and as Winifred watched, the child began to jump up and claw at her mother. The woman sat on an upturned butterbox and, taking the child on her knee, unbuttoned her shirt-waist to reveal two huge pendulous breasts. The child had clawed at one breast and, holding it to her mouth, began to suck lustily.

  Mrs Watkins had laughed. ‘She shouldn’t be having titty-bottle at her age. She’s old enough to work.’ Then she had looked serious and leaned towards Winifred, a drop of moisture trembling on the end of her nose. They say you can’t fall while you’ve got one on the breast. It makes you safe if your old man decides he wants to give you a poke. Women don’t have much choice in this world. If you says no, he’s likely to give you a poke in the eye instead.’

  Winifred had puzzled over that conversation for a lon
g time. Now she understood and was relieved that she was still breastfeeding. It would stop her from having another child if Charles wanted to make love to her, though she knew that love didn’t enter into it. He only wanted a woman, and she wondered if he had found another young girl like her while he had been away. If he had, perhaps he would leave her alone.

  She only had a few potatoes for tea and she peeled them and put them at the back of the stove in the black-iron pot, ready to bring them to the boil when Charles came back. She had not had meat for a long time and pride prevented her asking his mother.

  It was getting dark when her husband returned with Fred on his shoulders. They were both laughing and Winifred had a pang of jealousy, thinking that if they got too close Charles might take Fred from her. ‘He’s a real tiger,’ he said. ‘As soon as he’s old enough I’ll show him how to use the clippers. I can just see him on the boards, beside his old man.’

  ‘I want him to go to school.’

  ‘All he needs is to be able to write his name and add up a few figures. School doesn’t mean a thing when you’re in a shearing shed.’ He ruffled the child’s hair, saying ‘We’ll be a real team, won’t we, son?’ and handed him to Winifred.

  She put the child on the bed, unbuttoned her blouse and lay beside him, conscious that Charles was watching as the child kicked his legs and then fell off the breast to gaze around before latching on again. Later she sponged the child’s face and hands and changed his napkin; then, wrapping him tightly in his shawl, she put him to sleep in her bed.

  She boiled the potatoes and served them, giving the larger portion to Charles. ‘Where’s the meat?’ he asked.

  ‘I have no money to buy meat.’

  ‘There’s always sausage at the house, or bacon … I work hard for Vater. All I get in return is the use of this place and my keep. Anything you want you must ask Mutter.’

  ‘Did you bring any money?’ she asked.

  ‘You don’t need money.’

  ‘I need things.’

  ‘What things?’

  ‘I need a new dress — the one I had for my wedding is too big — and I’d like some material to make curtains and a tablecloth.’ She did not tell him that she wanted money to buy stamps to post off her articles.

  ‘I have no money for such things … As for a new dress, you don’t go anywhere. If you want money you’ll have to find it yourself.’

  ‘But where?’

  ‘Do as my sisters do. They make butter and take it to market. Mutter makes preserves and cheese. When Vater kills a pig they make bloodwurst and smoked bacon. Other women sell eggs. I’ll build you a fowl house and get you a goat. The cows dry out in winter. You’ll need milk.’

  ‘But who will milk it?’

  ‘You dom Britishers, you’ve never learned to work. My sisters milk ten cows twice a day.’

  Winifred did not answer, thinking of the years of hard work she had endured from the time she was a child. And now she had a child of her own to care for and was always tired. She wanted to ask what he had done with the money he earned but was afraid. Instead she rose to make the tea.

  Her eyes were full of unshed tears as she washed the plates later, and then she became conscious that he was standing behind her. She felt him take off her apron and turn her to face him. He put his arms around her and pulled her towards him so that her head rested on his shoulder. ‘Once,’ he whispered, ‘once I told you you had the most beautiful green eyes.’ She could feel the heat rising from his body as he pressed himself closer, until he pulled her down and she was lying with him on the kitchen floor.

  He went out later that night. When she asked him where he was going he said, ‘To see a man about a dog.’ And soon she heard the sound of his horse trotting along the path. She lay in bed with little Fred by her side, her feeling of unease growing. She had not meant to give in to him so easily. But at least she was safe. She knew that while he was home she must continue to breastfeed her child, then she would leave as soon as she could.

  13

  HOUSEHOLD DRUDGE

  IT WAS AUGUST WHEN CHARLES left to go shearing. He had been home long enough for the young couple to establish a relationship of sorts. Winifred had got into the habit of carrying him a billy can of tea and some bread and cheese in the middle of the day when he was working on the farm, and would sit on a cornsack with Fred propped up by her side, sharing his simple meal and watching while he ploughed the paddock.

  One day she took down his lunch and found him working alongside a group of men who spoke German. They were fencing a paddock, and though they glanced at her sitting there, they ignored her, laughing and joking as they worked. She waited for a while and then returned to the hut, noticing a few bottles of liquor lying unopened in the shade of a tree as she passed. Late in the afternoon she heard singing and the sound of men’s voices.

  Charles came stumbling up the steps later that evening, his face flushed, holding his accordion in one hand. He stopped when he saw her sitting at the kitchen table which was set for a meal. ‘Why are you still up?’

  ‘I kept your supper hot … I waited. Why are you so late?’

  ‘What I do is no concern of yours. No one asked you to come spying on me.’

  ‘What about your supper?’

  Instead of answering he leaned forward and swept the plates, the bread and cheese off the table, then without taking off his boots lay down on the bed fully dressed.

  Winifred picked up the food and wrapped it in a towel, then she put the dishes and knives and forks in the tin dish she used for washing up. Then she moved the pot of soup off the stove and sat at the kitchen table with her head bowed, trying to stop the tears that flowed down her cheeks. Later, when Charles had begun to snore, she took off her apron and dress, pulled on her nightgown and crept into bed, where she lay awake staring into the darkness.

  After that she kept her distance when he was working on the farm, always preparing something for supper in case he came home, never sure of his movements and too afraid to ask. She was worried that her milk might start to dry up over the winter and she was tense whenever he came near her, relieved when he went out in the evening so that she could pretend to be asleep when he returned. She had come to recognise the signs that he had been drinking heavily, his words slurred, his eyes red and wild-looking, and she tried not to provoke him, fearful of his temper and resentful of the way he squandered his money while refusing to give her any.

  With the coming of winter, life on the farm had slowed. The cows were drying out as the grass died, and they looked emaciated, their ribs sticking out as they chewed their winter feed of straw or a barrow-load of broken pumpkins — enough to sustain them until spring when they would fatten up and later give birth to their calves, their udders filling with milk. As soon as the calves were old enough they would be taken from their mothers, the males separated from the heifers and sent to market, with one butchered to provide veal for the table and delicious sausages which were laced with herbs and smoked, then hung in the coolroom.

  Mutter Barbara and her daughters spent the winter indoors by the huge fuel stove in the kitchen, sewing shirts and work trousers for the men and shirt-waists and skirts for themselves, darning and patching, making quilts from scraps of material and knitting woollen socks. Winifred kept away, isolated in the small hut with her child.

  When spring arrived the women emerged again, being needed to work outside. The daughters rose at dawn to see to the cows, while Mutter was busy with her sausage-making, her cheeses and her vegetable garden. She grew herbs and cabbages to replenish her stock of sauerkraut which had been used up over the winter, and Vater Carl sowed corn, pumpkins, melons and potatoes in the paddocks Charles had ploughed.

  Charles had also prepared a vegetable garden for Winifred beside the hut, turning over the dark soil, digging in barrow-loads of cow manure. Here Winifred planted corn and spinach, cabbages and potatoes. Beside the fence a plum tree had sprung into bloom. Gazing at it she thought it looked like a
queen in its dress of delicate pink, and she felt bereft when she saw how the blossoms lay on the ground after the first spring rains. She consoled herself with the thought of the fruit that would follow, wondering how she would keep away the birds, remembering the way they had stripped the corn on her father’s farm.

  There was a feeling of rejuvenation, as if the world had come alive. New grass was pushing up through the earth and along the road the acacia trees were in bloom. Winifred would pick a bunch, being careful to avoid the bees that clustered on the yellow blossom, and put it on her table in an empty tin, gazing at it with a sense of joy as she ate her simple meals, almost as if she had reconciled herself to life on the farm.

  She had Fred, so she did not feel lonely. And tethered near the house where it could keep the grass down, but beyond the reach of the clothes line which was tied between two belah trees and held up with a wooden prop, was the goat Charles had brought home. She had christened it the Princess Royal. As she fed it a clump of thistles or potato peelings, or sat beside it on a wooden stool milking it in the early mornings and afternoons, she would talk to it as if it was another human being, imagining the answers it might give and writing them down when she had a few spare minutes while Fred was asleep.