Washerwoman's Dream Read online

  Three days later Angus McDonald gave them a lift home on the way to one of the stations further out where he was to pick up a load of wool and deliver some supplies. He dropped them at their front door and came in for a cup of tea. The place was in a shambles — bush rats had moved in and devoured their bag of flour and prickly pear was growing through the walls.

  ‘I’ll stay and gie ye a hand,’ the bullock driver said. ‘Another day or two … no matter.’

  He had brought bread and cheese to eat on the way, and the canvas bag hanging on the side of the dray was full of fresh water. He divided the food into three portions, lit a fire and produced a bottle of rum. Long after Winifred had gone to bed she could hear the two men talking around the fire, which they kept burning all night to keep the rats at bay, and later there was the sound of Angus singing in a deep rich voice and then her father joined in with his light baritone. When she finally drifted off to sleep, she did so with a sense of peace, secure in the knowledge that her father had recovered and that things would be even better once her aunt and uncle arrived.

  8

  THE LOOKING GLASS

  WILLIAM IVANHOE OATEN AND HIS Wife Lydia arrived by Cobb and Co coach in April 1893 and there was a joyous reunion between the two brothers. For the first time since he had arrived in Australia Wilfred felt at ease. He had the support of his older brother whom he had always looked up to.

  For some reason Winifred did not take to her Uncle William. He arrived wearing a three-piece navy serge suit and a bowler hat and he carried a leather valise. He was a slightly larger replica of her father, with the same grey eyes and brown hair, the same mannerism of pulling at his left ear when he was thinking; but he had a slight potbelly and a puffiness under his eyes, unlike her father with his taut, thin body and haggard face from hard work and fatigue. It could have been the sardonic look in her uncle’s eyes as he stared at her with her long matted hair and suntanned face, wearing an outfit made from two sugar bags with holes cut out for the arms and head. Her bare legs were covered in festering sores from contact with the prickly pear, her dirty bare toes protruding from worn boots. Without greeting her he turned and handed his wife down from the coach.

  Winifred stood transfixed at the sight of her Aunt Lydia. She had dark hair that formed a widow’s peak and was streaked with grey. It reminded the girl of the wings of a bird. Her eyes were dark brown and she wore a dress of taffeta of the same colour. It had a fashionable bustle, a braid trim in the front with a matching mantle, and with it she wore a little brown velour hat trimmed with a pheasant’s feather. On her hands were brown kid gloves and she carried a reticule made of the same material as her dress.

  The woman hesitated when her eyes lit on the hut standing forlornly by the road, the prickly pear towering behind it, and Winifred saw a shadow pass over her face. But then she turned to the girl and smiled a dazzling smile. ‘I’m your Aunt Lydia. I’m looking forward to getting to know you, mon chérie,’ and she embraced her lightly, kissing her on both cheeks.

  As she did so Winifred caught a faint whiff of lavender and had a sudden vision of her mother reaching out for the bottle of lavender water on her dressing table. A wave of nostalgia and sadness swept over her. She was jolted out of it by her aunt’s voice: ‘I’m parched … I hope there’s a cup of tea.’ She hurried back into the hut and, clutching the bottle and the billy can, made her way down to the creek.

  Later Aunt Lydia unpacked her wooden chest containing her clothes and bed linen, a white woven tablecloth which she spread on the bark table at mealtimes, and some fringed Spanish shawls which she placed over the backs of the chairs. There was also a paraffin lamp with pink glass which threw a soft light around the crude room at night.

  To separate Winifred’s sleeping quarters from the room where they ate, Lydia hung a length of chintz patterned in pink roses, which had covered the front window of her home in Brisbane, where William had been the highly respected stationmaster at Bald Hills Railway Station. But the thing that captured Winifred’s heart was a silver teapot which her Aunt Liddy placed in the centre of the table and into which the girl gazed, seeing herself reflected in its gleaming surface.

  These simple measures transformed the hut and turned it into a home, a place where the girl felt a sense of security as she watched her aunt, soft white hands, with a gold wedding band on one finger and a sparkling amethyst on another, poised over the teapot as she poured the tea. In the place of tin mugs there were white china cups that did not burn your lips when you drank.

  Then there were white cotton bedsheets. Winifred had not slept between sheets since she left England. It meant washing her feet in the tin dish before she got into bed so that the sheets did not get stained from the black soil, as well as carrying the sheets down to the creek to wash. Later she and her aunt would stand facing each other, holding the sheets by the corners, stretching them until they were straight and then folding them before putting them back into Lydia’s wooden trunk that smelt of lavender.

  Lydia taught the girl how to make a bed, smoothing the sheets, making sure the end with the wide hem was at the top, tucking in the corners, and folding the blanket at the bottom of the bed where it could be pulled up ‘in case you feel cold’. By this time Winifred had acquired a real bed made of black iron and a mattress made from a calico bag stuffed with chaff. It had come by bullock dray with a terse message from the driver as he dropped it off: ‘I’m on the way through to collect a load of wool. Yer dad asked me to deliver this.’

  The next time the bullock dray came past it was carrying a camp oven. This meant that they could make bread and scones and girdle cakes, as well as roast meat and bake vegetables. Rabbits had multiplied in the district and a pair of rabbits could be had for threepence. With Wilfred earning a regular wage at Jondaryan Station, their life had become easier. The days of living on damper and treacle, with an occasional wallaby which a small Aboriginal boy would sell to them for threepence, were over.

  Wilfred was enjoying his new life. In addition to the money he earned, he had the companionship of other men, and away from the sight of the prickly pear he could put it from his mind. He did not realise that his trust in his brother was misplaced and that William had not been honest with him. William and Lydia had sought him out, not through any family feeling, but because William had been disgraced and needed somewhere to go.

  William had been dismissed from the Railways Department for being drunk on duty. It meant not only the loss of face, but also his salary of one hundred and thirty pounds a year and the stationmaster’s house that went with the position. In a way it was a relief for Lydia, who had come to dread the sight of the police buggy pulling to a stop in front of their house while the local sergeant helped William to the front door.

  When she opened it the sergeant would say, ‘I’ve brought your husband home, Mrs Oaten,’ and help her get him into bed. William was always full of remorse the next day, promising a tearful Lydia that he would stay away from hotels. For a while he kept his promise, but his need for alcohol was too great and eventually he started keeping a bottle of whisky in his desk. It was all right for a man to come home the worse for drink after a convivial evening with friends, but to be drunk on duty when he was in charge of a railway station was a different matter because it could interfere with the safety of the trains. Once his behaviour was noticed he was dismissed without a reference.

  It was a terrible blow to Lydia, who lost her cherished home and her social position as the wife of a senior civil servant. She was accustomed to being ‘at home’ every Wednesday to the other wives who moved in the same circle. No one had called on her once they heard about her husband’s downfall and Lydia packed up her home alone. She brought her treasures with her, together with their beds and bedding, and put the rest of their goods and chattels in store until they could find somewhere else to live.

  She knew that there was no prospect of her husband getting another position in the Civil Service unless they travelled interstate w
here he was not known. But first she had to wean him off the drink. She thought this would be possible away from the city.

  In England Lydia had been a poorly paid nursery governess to one of the old families. It was a step above the downstairs staff — she took her meals in the nursery and had regular contact with her employer when she made her evening visit to see her children. Like all their staff she travelled with the family when they made their annual trip to take the waters at Bath. It was here that she met her husband at a church social, long after she had given up all thought of marriage. When he followed her to Reading after the family returned home, she married him in the parish church of St Mary’s, even though she did not love him. Her employer gave her a dowry of household linen and ten gold sovereigns. When William suggested migrating to Australia, she went with him gladly.

  Living in a makeshift humpy with a husband whose one thought was of alcohol was difficult but she tried to make the best of it. It was the friendship with Winifred that sustained her. She was touched by the neglected appearance of the girl. She made an effort to get her hair into some sort of order, lending her her hairbrush and showing her how to braid her hair, then giving her two blue hair ribbons to tie at the ends. She cut down several of her old gowns to make Winifred dresses, laying out the garments on the bark-topped table and showing her niece how to sew, taking out scissors, needle, thread and a thimble from a cane workbasket with a top of orange cretonne and a drawstring cord. While her aunt was busy with the scissors, Winifred would take out the tortoiseshell box of buttons, arranging them in rows, separating the mother-of-pearl shirt buttons from the bone trouser buttons. One day she pored over the blue glass buttons with a white daisy in the centre. ‘I got those when your uncle and I were in Venice,’ Lydia said and gave Winifred one to keep. She had it for a long while until she lost it through a crack in the wall when she was playing with it in bed and it was consumed by the prickly pear.

  It was the time the older woman and the young girl sat together sewing that forged a close bond. Starved of affection, Winifred loved to listen to her aunt’s stories, particularly the one of how her grandmama was smuggled ‘from the great chateau in the dead of night in a cart full of washing. There was no room for my great-grandmama and my great-grandpapa. They went to the guillotine because they’d worked in a noble house — beheaded, just like Queen Marie Antoinette.’ Lydia’s eyes would sparkle and flash and then grow sad.

  ‘But what had they done?’ Winifred would ask, her eyes shining with unshed tears.

  ‘Nothing … it was the revolution.’

  ‘But why?’ No matter how often Winifred heard the story, she always asked the same questions.

  ‘Well, times were hard and some people couldn’t afford to buy bread. When the Queen heard, she said, “Let them eat cake.” But you see, if they couldn’t afford bread, how could they buy cake?’

  ‘What sort of cake?’ Winifred put down her needle and cotton, and with her elbows on the table, rested her chin in her hands.

  ‘They’re a sweet type of pastry that French people eat for breakfast. Flaky and light and made from yeast. You dip them in your morning coffee.’

  ‘Have you ever tasted one?’

  ‘Often. There was a French cook in the manor house where I worked.’ Lydia picked up a shirt-waist she was making for Winifred and sewed on a pearl button.

  ‘Tell me about the great house where your grandmother lived.’

  ‘Some other time, chéri.’

  Winifred never heard the end of the story because her aunt would always jump up, glance out the door and say, ‘The sun’s in the west. It’s time to take your uncle some tea and a scone. He must be parched. The kettle’s boiling. You make the tea and I’ll get the bread in the oven and stew some prickly pears. The fruit is such a beautiful colour once it’s cooked … like a topaz.’

  The girl would put some tea leaves in the billy can, fill it with boiling water, then sweeten it with sugar and turn the lid upside down. Balancing a tin mug and a scone on top, she would carry this in her left hand and in her right hand a stick, in case a death adder should appear. By now, though, she had lost her fear, knowing that if she made enough noise anything on the path would slide into the dense thicket of pear, the only indication of its presence was the sound of rustling as she approached.

  As weeks went by Winifred had more and more trouble finding her uncle. When he had first arrived she would know where he was by the sound of an axe. But lately it had been strangely quiet in the afternoon. One day she followed a long tunnel he had cut in the prickly pear. It reminded her of the tunnel Alice had fallen down, except that this one went sideways through the pear. And where Alice’s tunnel had been black, this was all green, almost like being at the bottom of the sea.

  Winifred came across her uncle in a little clearing. He was lying there with his eyes closed, an empty whisky bottle by his side. For a minute she thought he was asleep and then she realised that he was in a drunken stupor. She hesitated, wondering whether to try to rouse him, and then, putting the billy can on the ground, ran back to get her aunt.

  It was a mistake, because her uncle never forgave her for exposing his weakness.

  She lay awake that night listening to her aunt pleading and crying with her uncle as she tried to make him promise to give up the drink. The next morning William followed Winifred outside and hissed at her, ‘You little sneak, you great fat ugly thing.’ He was so close that she could feel his spittle on her face. She turned and ran in her nightshirt to the creek, without having anything to eat or drink. She stayed there for a long while, thinking back to her childhood and how her mother had told her she was ugly, almost convincing herself that it must be true.

  Eventually she was able to compose herself as she watched the water bubbling over the round polished stones on the creek bed and the sky with its drift of clouds. She had a sudden memory of Mr Smithers, who had once said to her, ‘Life can be hard but nothing can hurt you unless you let it.’ He had treated her kindly and told her she was clever.

  Later, she heard her aunt’s light tread coming down the track. She had a plate in her hand with a slice of bread and jam on it, and a mug of tea. ‘I have been worried about you, chéri. Did we upset you last night?’ She sat beside Winifred and put her arm around her, holding her close. ‘Your uncle cannot help himself. He got into bad company in Brisbane and lost his job. That’s why we came here. Now we must watch him to make sure that he doesn’t get hold of strong drink … otherwise there’s no hope for him.’

  Winifred tried to do as her aunt had asked, watching her uncle, following him surreptitiously when he went down the tunnel to the clearing he had made in the prickly pear to see if he had a bottle hidden anywhere. But if he caught her staring at him he would wait until he had her alone and then continue his verbal onslaught, never hitting her but putting her down with his tongue. ‘Did anyone ever tell you how fat and ugly you are? No one will ever want you.’

  Though she tried not to let it upset her, he had the power to wound her and she found herself spending more and more time by the creek, unable to confide in her aunt because she did not want to hurt her.

  It was at this time that her father sent home an invitation to the Shearers’ Feast at Jondaryan, a celebration to mark the end of shearing. ‘Put a dress on that kid, and clean up her hair,’ he wrote to her aunt. ‘I’ll call for you in a sulky.’ With the note was a roll of black moulton cloth, a heavy black material normally used for making blazers, and some cards of pink baby ribbon. ‘I’m sure you can whip up something. I was a bit late getting to the shop and this was all that was left.’

  The invitation occupied Lydia and Winifred. Uncle William found himself left to his own devices, having decided not to go. A sly-grog shanty had opened up on the main road, within walking distance of the Oatens’ land. It was a one-room bark hut without windows, and a door just wide enough for a man to squeeze through. When Winifred asked about it Aunt Lydia told her that wine shanties sprung up wh
erever shearers and itinerant workers gathered at the end of the season with their cheques. ‘Many intend to return to their home, if they have one, others plan to buy a passage back to their country of birth. It’s very sad. After a few drinks, chéri, they forget and spend all their money.’

  One day Lydia and Winifred walked past the shanty and saw the men spilling out onto the road, drinking from tin pannikins and bottles. William was among them. When she saw him Lydia averted her eyes, knowing that he was spending their savings. Her one consolation was that as soon as the men returned to work, the shanty would close, to spring up again next year. But by that time she hoped to have her husband safely out of the way.

  Though Winifred felt sorry for her aunt, she was pleased her uncle was occupied elsewhere, certain that he would have spoiled her enjoyment of the party and her excitement about having a new dress. If Lydia had misgivings about the way the long black dress looked on her niece, she put them to one side. To lighten the look of the thick black material she had decorated the dress with tiny pink ribbon bows.

  Wilfred made no comment on his daughter’s appearance when he called for her and her aunt in a horse and sulky which he had bought out of his earnings. Lydia had braided Winifred’s hair and looped it on either side of her head, tying it in pink ribbon bows. Standing back to admire her handiwork she was disconcerted to see how the dress stood stiffly around the young girl like a tent, but she thought that perhaps away from the city the other young women would be dressed in a similar fashion.

  As they waited to get into the sulky Lydia kissed Winifred on both cheeks. ‘You’ll be the belle of the ball. You look so beautiful with colour in your cheeks and your eyes sparkling.’ Under her praise Winifred glowed and pressed close to her aunt as her father whipped up the horse for the run to Jondaryan.

  The long driveway was a blaze of lights with pitch-covered poles that had been driven into the ground and set alight. On the verandah there were long tables set with all manner of dainties: iced cakes, scones, cold meats and pitchers of fruit juices. Winifred had never seen such a spread. The sound of an accordion and a violin floated out from a large room where people were dancing.