Mary
When Sister Kathleen dropped by after she had finished her rounds one morning, she brought me half a fruit cake, baked by her mother.
‘Come, Mary, let’s sit under the trees for a chat and eat the cake there.’
‘How was your holiday? You went home didn’t you?’
‘It was a pleasant rest from this mad house, I can tell you. But my father was hobbling about in pain more than usual. His leg never really recovered from the accident he had when I was a little girl.’
‘What happened?’ It was my chance to hear a story.
‘When Father was publican in Angaston, his leg was almost smashed to pieces in a freak accident. It happened during the weekly beer delivery from the brewery. Father was in the cellar when several kegs accidently fell through the cellar opening. One of the brewery horses shied for some reason. We all thought Father had been killed. Fred, ‘the boots’, as publicans call their odd-job men, saved his life by dragging him from beneath the kegs and up the steps to the trap. He rushed him off to the German hospital where Mother’s brother-in-law worked as a limb-maker. Mother had to take over the pub but next morning, being Saturday and no school, she drove my brother and me to see him. I’ll never forget it for I expected to find my father dying. Instead he was sitting up in bed laughing and carrying on with three young wounded soldiers from the Boer War and a nurse, all in white. Well, I’d never seen anyone like her before. She looked like an angel in her white starched uniform. She was taking their temperatures and telling these four grown men how to behave. And guess what, Mary?’
‘What?’
‘They all took notice of her. I also saw her dressing the wound of the stump of the leg of one of them. And though I was only a little girl, that’s when I decided to become a nurse. This was about the same time my father was told that his younger brother had died of gunshot wounds to his stomach while fighting in South Africa. Father said his brother was always a bit of a larrikin but joined up for adventure. It was so long before he was given medical attention that he died.’
‘How sad.’
‘It was. But like many families there were plenty of animosities within it. You see, Aunty’s German family supported the Boers’ cause in South Africa. It seems that when my uncle’s grandfather first came to South Australia, he felt hard done by when he was not allowed to register as a doctor. But he became one anyway, practising at first in a small way as a homeopathic practitioner. He was also well known for mending bones or replacing missing limbs because that’s what he’d done when he was in the Prussian army before he came to South Australia. But he never forgot how he was treated and when the South African war began, he caused a lot of problems by letting it be known whose side he was on. Despite all that, he never turned anyone away from his hospital.’
She looked away as she gathered her breath. ‘So, your turn, tell me what happened after the inquest and how you were treated once you had been accused of being a murderess.’
I’ll never forget the fear in August and Willy’s eyes when I was led to the farmhouse by two policemen after the inquest. I was told I was going to Adelaide as soon as I had taken some refreshment and packed a bag. It had never occurred to me that this would happen, that I would leave Towitta so suddenly. For so long I had yearned to go, but not like this. Sitting on the scrubbed wooden table in the kitchen was a large pot of tea and a fruit loaf. Mother was laid out with grief on the kitchen sofa and her loud sobs intensified when she saw me in the company of the troopers. She rushed to me and clung, sobbing, ‘But you’re my only girl now … and they are taking you from me.’
When I finished eating, I gathered clothes into a bag and kissed my sobbing mother goodbye. She staggered outside after me, Father supporting her. ‘I did not do it, Mother,’ I reassured her calmly.
Father watched me closely while she replied, ‘I know you didn’t, girl.’ And the sobbing began afresh. ‘I have lost two daughters at once. I have lost them all.’
At the sight of my bewildered parents, the hot tears fell. They were the first tears I had shed since Bertha’s death. I climbed into one of the police carriages that was to transport me to the Angaston police station with constables Beckmann and Campbell. I cried a good deal of the way to Angaston. The two policemen didn’t know how to comfort me. Their attempts were clumsy but well-meaning, ‘Now c’mon, Miss, it’s not as bad as all that. You’ve got nothing to worry about you know … if you didn’t do it.’
Of course these reassuring words only made me cry louder. Then through sheer weariness and relief, I fell asleep. Sometime after midnight we arrived in Angaston and I was shaken awake and taken to the cells behind the police station. I was exhausted, my head throbbed and my face was swollen from the crying. After having the charge of murder read out to me again, I was told I’d be taken by horse and carriage to Freeling where we’d catch the steam train to Adelaide. After a few hours sleep on a narrow creaking bed, I was roused before dawn and told to prepare myself for the journey. I put back on my black dress. Because it was so early in the morning and a little chilly, I took my brown cape from my bag and brushed my hair as best as I could without a mirror. When I washed my face in a bowl of cool water I felt better, though my eyes felt puffy and my head still ached.
I climbed into the coach and nearly broke into fresh tears when I found the assistant crown solicitor and the coroner seated inside. A small crowd of people had gathered to see us off. I was happy to hide behind the veil that Mother gave me, from both the crowd outside and the crown solicitor and the coroner within, who glanced my way knowingly. They sat opposite each other and seemed immersed in their discussions, but now and again Dr Ramsay Smith, the coroner, would stare at me but say nothing. When we arrived at Freeling railway station our group sat on the platform, waiting for the morning express train from Kapunda. I sat on a bench under the verandah, the station basking in the early morning sun, not yet burning. Only Constable Beckmann now travelled with me. Dressed in plain clothes, he sat some distance away in order not to attract attention to me.
While I waited, a two-year-old who had travelled with her mother on the coach to Freeling approached me in a friendly manner. She was so endearing I spilled a tear or two, realising it was unlikely that I would ever have a darling girl like her to call my own. When the train steamed in twenty minutes later I took my place like an ordinary passenger, off to Adelaide for shopping or a visit, in a second-class compartment with the constable seated nearby. During the journey others boarded but the policeman gave no indication that he was with me, and the other passengers were oblivious to my state. If only you knew who I was, I thought, the alleged Towitta murderess, no less. How would you treat me then? Would you move out of the carriage if you knew, or spit in my eye with outrage? But no one guessed; no one even looked in my direction.
When the train arrived at Gawler station I saw a group of people marching up and down the platform inspecting the passengers, hoping to catch a glimpse of the alleged murderess, I guessed. But they were fooled by the plainclothes policeman who made a show of being oblivious to me and when the train started again for Adelaide, I never felt their curious eyes on me for a moment.