It was the last week of April and autumn was well on the way. The welcome swallows were long gone and now the goldfinches had followed. Along the creeks the poplars burnt like yellow candles in the sunlight and when the wind blew the air was a torrent of falling leaves.
Now, unexpectedly, there was mystery in the air as well as leaves. Everyone at Derwent knew something was on the go but what it might be was the question.
Two days before the old lady had received a letter that had given her enormous satisfaction. Gladys, one of the maids, had reported meeting Mrs Penrose in the long gallery and hearing her humming a tune. Nobody had heard of such a thing before.
Now, suitcases and hatbox packed, Grandma had taken off in her carriage, saying only that she would be back the following day.
‘Or possibly the day after,’ she told Mrs Harris, the housekeeper.
Bec and Jonathan were up by Blackman’s Head. They hadn’t made love yet because today was a special occasion: Jonathan had decreed they would have a picnic.
‘I’ll get Mrs Gadd to knock us up something,’ he had said.
Now they unpacked the picnic basket. Mrs Gadd’s something consisted of potted meats, slices of ham and beef, a cold fillet of salmon, a loaf of crusty fresh-baked bread with farm butter and what Bec thought of as a righteous pork pie.
She said as much to Jonathan, who laughed.
‘Delectable, I’ll give you. Even ambrosial. But righteous? What’s righteous about a pie?’
‘Don’t you go teasing me with your smart words,’ she said. ‘All food’s righteous, when it’s like this.’
That was a measure of the gulf between them, she thought, that he should take such things for granted while she didn’t.
He kissed her. ‘I stand corrected. Righteous it is.’
There was also a bottle of wine, still moderately cold, with a corkscrew and two glasses.
Jonathan drew the cork and poured; Bec examined the contents of her glass, pale yellow in the sunlight.
‘I never drank anything like this before,’ she said. ‘What do you call it?’
‘It’s called Riesling. It comes from Watervale in South Australia. The family has an interest.’
Again the casual assumption of normality. One or other of us has a lot of learning to do, Bec thought, if we’re ever to be comfortable together.
She sipped cautiously and made a face.
‘It’s sour!’ Then tried again. ‘But I think it could become quite pleasing. With practice.’
‘It does, I assure you.’
‘It makes my head feel funny,’ she said.
‘I know the treatment for that,’ he said.
He kissed her so long and so hard that soon her head was spinning for reasons other than the wine.
‘You’ll spill it,’ she said.
‘Tip it down,’ he said. ‘Then it won’t be a problem.’
She thought that sounded like good advice, so she took it. And later had no more thoughts about the Riesling wine at all.
Later Bec lay at Jonathan’s side on the ragged blanket she had begged from Mrs Painter, who had been wise enough not to ask what she wanted it for. The breeze was cool on her skin; the autumn gales would soon be here and making love in the open would be out of the question.
‘Make my titties wrinkle like lemons,’ Bec said.
Jonathan had been half asleep. ‘What?’
‘I was thinking what it would be like to do this in the snow.’
‘Heaven forbid.’
‘Might be all right with a few rugs,’ she said.
For the moment, though, Bec was content to lie there and listen to the voices of the bush about her.
The teacher at her local school had sensed Bec’s potential and lent her lots of books. She’d read how trees lived for many years, which had made her think about all the things they must have seen in their time. In her imagination she had identified with the movement of the black bands through the high country, sunlight shining on the quartz tips of their long spears.
‘What happened to them?’ she asked Mrs Roberts.
‘Mostly they died.’
‘But how?’
‘Disease for the most part. But also fighting each other and the settlers.’
‘Are there any left?’
‘Some, not many.’
‘That is sad,’ Bec said.
‘Yes, but it’s how the world is,’ Mrs Roberts said.
Lying on the threadbare earth, Bec sensed shadows parting to reveal the shy movement of wallaby and quoll, the menace of snakes, the wide-awake eyes of possums.
All these things were part of the land.
We have our place too, Bec thought. We are as much part of the rhythm of things as those others. It was more feeling than thought but it made her proud and humble at the same time. In the voice of the wind she could hear the distant resonance of didgeridoo, of vanished voices singing the dawn. Everything that had ever happened was there in the trees and the dusty scrub, the orange sweep of Blackman’s Head soaring into the sky above them, every day turning blood-red in the morning sun. The kookaburra greeting the dawn.
We are part of it, she thought, part of the footprints criss-crossing the land.
She would have shared her feelings with the man, had it been possible, but she did not have the words. Instead she lay silently, eyes wide and senses alert, knowing herself to be a part of the whole.
Later, when for the second time that day they made love, it was for Bec not merely a celebration of the flesh but an offering to the spirits of the land.
Just before lunch the next day Mrs Harris looked out of Derwent’s drawing room window and saw what looked like a black beetle crawling slowly up the track that connected the big house with the north–south road, trailing smoke as it came.
‘What on earth is it?’
Walter, the assistant gardener and a bit of a know-all, provided the answer.
‘It’s a motor car, Mrs Harris.’
Mrs Harris’s hand was on her palpitating breast. ‘Why’s it coming here?’
‘I reckon you’ll find Mrs Penrose has gone and bought it,’ Walter said.
Most of the staff were staring now.
‘I’ve seen pictures,’ Gladys said, ‘But that’s the first real one I’ve seen.’
‘I wonder what type of motor it is?’ Walter said.
‘You’re saying there is more than one type?’ said Mrs Harris.
‘There are lots of different types,’ Walter said. ‘It’s the coming thing, Mrs Harris.’
Mrs Harris was not happy with coming things. ‘Oh dear.’
They watched the motor creeping up the hill.
‘It’s going very slowly,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘You think it’ll manage to get up here?’
‘Won’t the old lady be mad if it doesn’t?’ Walter said.
‘Best get on,’ Mrs Harris said. ‘Don’t want her to catch us idling.’
When she arrived Bessie was more the lady of the manor than ever: an achievement that most would have thought impossible. She sailed into the house like a liner entering harbour, berthed herself in her favourite chair and sent for Mrs Harris. Whom she favoured with her best chatelaine smile.
‘Any excitements while I’ve been away?’
‘Nothing, Mrs Penrose.’
‘No births, marriages or deaths?’
‘None that I’m aware of.’
‘I saw the staff all agog as I came up the hill.’
‘Many of them have never seen a motor car before, Mrs Penrose.’
‘They’d better get used to them. There’ll be plenty about before long. I understand they are quite the rage in England. I believe the king has one.’
‘Is that so, Mrs Penrose?’ Mrs Harris knew better than get into technicalities. ‘Did it come from England?’ Because surely it could not have been manufactured locally.
‘From America. It was made by a man called Ford. I ordered it some time ago. It is called a Model T Ford and as far as I know is the first one in the country.’
‘That is very impressive, Mrs Penrose.’
Mrs Harris’s success in her career had been aided by her ability to say the right thing when the right thing needed to be said.
‘I daresay my grandson will be interested,’ Bessie said. ‘These days young people seem to like mechanical things. Is he somewhere about?’
‘I believe he is out, Mrs Penrose.’
‘Do we know where he is?’
Mrs Harris, who knew almost to the inch where Jonathan was, shook her head. ‘He didn’t say, Mrs Penrose.’
It took Jonathan two hours to get back to Derwent House.
After dropping Bec at the Painters’ place his emotions were in such a state that he decided to go back to Blackman’s Head. He went there because it had become important to him and because he had things to work out.
He sat listening to the peaceful sounds of the horse grazing and thinking of everything that had happened there. Bec’s sighs of fulfilment as they made love echoed in the silently watching trees and he knew it had been then, lying in each other’s arms beneath the towering mass of the Head, the wind-rustled leaves of the overarching trees, that the bond between them had been forged.
This was the place.
He spoke aloud to the scrubby bush. ‘I shall not let her down.’
Easily said, but the challenge facing them was immense. Grandma Bessie had never tolerated opposition. He knew she would do whatever she could to make sure her legacy remained true to the image she was determined it should have. And one thing was sure: no way did Bec Hampton fit into that image. Money, power and prestige were what Grandma Bessie valued and Bec had none of them. Jonathan doubted there was a woman in Tasmania who in Grandma Bessie’s opinion would be less suitable to becoming the wife of Derwent’s owner than Bec Hampton, the blacksmith’s daughter.
Would she really disown him if the marriage went ahead?
He supposed she might. He would just have to talk her round.
God knew how.
He mounted Hector and set off for home.
Mrs Painter gave Bec a questioning look when she came into the house. ‘Gone, has he?’
Bec gave her a nod and a quick smile but did not speak. Her heart was in turmoil and she was afraid if she said anything it would show. She went into her room and closed the door behind her. She lay on the bed, staring up at the ceiling.
This new Bec.
She thought: You’ve done it now.
Love was a foreign country, lying somewhere between the marsh and the twin hillocks where passion lived, but it was not alone; there was also fear. Bessie Penrose had always been a tyrant; if she felt herself or her plans threatened she would be merciless.
Bec had read of people who had sacrificed everything for love; she had the uneasy feeling she might be close to doing exactly that.
Then she thought, No. She was strong; she was determined; she was in love. She would not let an old woman ruin her life. She would fight. God knew how, but she would fight.