A Waltz for Matilda (34 page)

She stared at him. ‘I thought you were always rich.’

He laughed. ‘What? No. My father was an ex-convict. So was my mother. We weren’t badly off. There was enough to send me to school, to have a cook in the kitchen and someone to do the scrubbing, but we weren’t rich by any means. The old man made money eventually — he had a brickworks — but by then I was long gone. I wanted no part of brick-making. I headed out here when I was seventeen, with two horses, three convicts and 200 sheep to my name.’

She gazed at him. ‘What did your parents think?’

‘My mother died when I was nine. My father lent me the money for the sheep, pulled a few strings to get the convicts assigned, but that was as much as he could do for me. He
married again … oh, twenty years after that. He was rich enough by then, could afford to marry a lady and be respectable.’

‘Mrs Ellsmore’s mother?’

‘That’s it.’ He smiled. ‘She was a lady. But my sister gets her temper from our father.’

‘Why did you ask Tommy for a car?’

He raised an eyebrow at the change of subject. ‘For you.’

‘Me?’

‘He’s your friend, isn’t he?’ he asked gently. His flush of anger had vanished.

‘Yes.’

‘Well then. I approve of him. Your young man knows how to stick at things. Knows how to dream of what he wants and make it happen too. Just like you and me, for that matter. Any more questions?’ He handed her the reins. ‘I’m an old man, and it’s been a long day. I think I’ll have a nap.’

MAY 1899

Town looked like a mob of emus had descended upon it, tramping up the dust. But this mob was people.

Drays and sulkies lined the streets. The crowd was thickest by the Town Hall, which had been set up for voting. Men were milling round, peering at the pamphlets handed out by the union supporters; Mrs Lacey and another of the Women’s Temperance and Suffrage League held up a giant banner saying
Votes for Women
; and children were rolling hoops or running under skirts. The crowd was so thick she urged Timber into a side street and went around the block, rather than try to ride through it.

Every hitching rail in town had horses tied up to it. There was no room to leave Timber anywhere near Tommy’s shop. Finally she tied the horse to a fence further down the street, then knocked on the back door to see if the owner minded.

There was no one home. Gone to see the referendum too, she supposed, but they surely wouldn’t mind if she watered her horse. She unstrapped the saddle, then hauled up water from their well and poured some into the canvas bag she carried for Timber. She waited till the horse had drunk, cursing all skirts and stays. But she couldn’t come into town in trousers, especially not today.

She lifted her skirts in one hand, holding the saddle awkwardly under her other arm, and trod with care along the rutted footpath till she reached the shed behind the strip of shops. The ground was level here, shaded by shop verandahs and swept clean each morning by the shopkeepers.

The door to Tommy’s shop was shut. He must be over at the Town Hall like everyone else. She ducked behind the shed and dumped her saddle on a bench where no one could see it. She gave a thankful sigh, then dusted her skirt and straightened her hat, and headed back to the street.

She gazed over toward the Town Hall. Mr Gotobed caught her eye, and waved his stone jug high in the air. He looked half pickled already, like most of the men here. She waved back. She would have liked to look inside, to see the men voting, but the crowd looked thicker than sheep crammed in a crush. She probably wouldn’t see anything even if she did force her way through.

Well, it wasn’t even as though she could vote herself. You had to be a man and over twenty-one to vote in this referendum. And white. Mr Sampson was checking the boundaries for strays today, carefully avoiding any travellers on the road to town. She wondered how much it hurt, having newcomers vote about your land, while you had no say at all.

She should have stayed at home. And yet …

These men might be helping to create a new Australia. If a
majority in every state voted yes then this time next year there might be a new nation.

She was here for her father. This was what he had dreamed of — it was part of his dream, at least. And maybe a new Australian government might even decide to give the vote to women too. As long as they were white.

Well, she had seen the referendum. When she was an old woman she could tell her great-grandchildren, ‘I was there.’ She probably wouldn’t add, ‘All I saw were crowds of men, and half of them were drunk.’

She picked up her skirts again and headed over the street to the Workers’ Institute. The top floor was union offices, but the lower floor was a library, free to the family of any union member. Mr Gotobed had given Matilda her entry card when it first opened, in memory of her dad.

At least it was cool inside. The desk was vacant. The librarian — an old one-armed ex-shearer — must have been with the crowd across the road.

She looked at the new books first, and chose a novel for herself,
A Knight of the White Feather
by ‘Tasma’, who the book’s cover said was an Australian, then picked up the latest issue of
Popular Mechanics
for Tommy.

The librarian was back at his desk now. He opened her book with a practised flick of his remaining hand, and stamped it for her, then nodded across the road. ‘Wish your pa could have seen that. Don’t you think folks around here have forgot him. It’s ’cause of men like your pa we was voting today.’

‘Did you vote yes or no?’

He looked at her sternly. ‘Meant to be a secret ballot, missy. Secret ballot is important. That way no one can get back at you for how you voted.’

‘Yes, of course. I’m sorry.’

He grinned, letting out the stench of decayed teeth. ‘I voted yes, o’ course. Tell you what; we’re going to have a government of the workers within three years, or my name’s not One-Arm Smith.’

Which it probably isn’t, she thought, as she stepped out into the sunlight again. She knew enough by now to guess that half the men around had changed their names: ex-convicts hiding their pasts, men who’d run out on their families, had left debts or crimes behind, or just got the wanderlust.

The breeze blew eddies down the road, whirls of grass and dust. She longed for a cup of tea, or even better, a glass of lemonade, made from fresh lemons and white sugar and cool water from the spring.

Tommy’s shop door was still shut. She glanced over at the Doos’ Prosperity Hardware Store, but their doors were closed as well.

For a moment she wondered if Mr Doo and Patricia were in the crowd. But of course Mr Doo couldn’t vote, no matter how prosperous his store. There had been more in the papers lately about the need to stop anyone from Asia coming to Australia. If the referendum was passed, the new parliament might even decide Mr Doo and his family should be sent to China, a place neither he nor Patricia had ever seen. Over my dead body, she thought, then shook her head. That too was what her father had wanted. You weren’t perfect, Dad, she thought, and I don’t suppose your new nation will be either.

She tried to look in the Prosperity Hardware Store windows, but the blinds were down. Mr Doo and Patricia would be out at the market garden, ignoring the hullabaloo in town. Perhaps drinking tea …

If Tommy didn’t come back soon she’d have to wait for something to drink till she got home. She didn’t want to stand here waiting for him in the wind.

We need a Presbyterian Ladies’ Tearoom, she thought. The only place you can get a drink here is one of the pubs.

The Pig and Whistle was on the corner opposite. A couple of drunks lounged against the hitching rails, even so early in the day. But for once the rest of the hotel looked quiet and peaceful, the words
A Clean Accommodation
neatly printed above the window by the main entrance. Another door further down bore the words
Dining Room.

Matilda hesitated. A dining room would serve tea, wouldn’t it, not spirituous liquor? And something to eat. She smiled at herself. Who would have thought a few years ago she’d have the money to eat in a dining room?

That decided her. She picked up her skirts, cursed her stays once again — she wasn’t going to get into a dress again for a month, except for church — and crossed the road.

It was cool inside the dining room. The high ceiling was speckled with fly spots, but the wood floor and white tablecloths were clean. She could smell mutton roasting. From next door came the low buzz of men talking.

A woman with the leather skin of a long-time country-dweller and an almost-clean apron came out of the kitchen door, bringing a mob of attendant flies. She waved at them irritably with one hand, then smiled when she saw Matilda. ‘Good afternoon, Miss O’Halloran.’

Matilda nodded, embarrassed. They all know me, she thought. Just like Mr Doo and Ahmed. I’m the girl who runs a farm. She took the menu, glad that she at least knew what a menu was.

Roast mutton; chops and eggs; chops, eggs and potatoes. It was nothing like the menu at Mum’s tearoom had been — no cinnamon toast or even scones. She’d love a date scone …

‘Could I just have a pot of tea? Some bread and butter?’

The woman still stared at her curiously. ‘We got apricot jam. That do you?’

‘Please,’ said Matilda gratefully.

‘How about a nice slice of ham? Could do you a ham sandwich too.’

‘Ham!’ She hadn’t had ham since Aunt Ann died. ‘Yes, that would be lovely.’

The woman nodded. ‘Be right with you, love.’

Matilda sat back and shut her eyes. Why was she so tired just from a day in town? It’s the dress, she thought. This stupid mass of material weighing me down. And the stays.

The thud of someone playing piano with more enthusiasm than skill sounded from the room next door. Someone barked, ‘Get off it, Joe.’

The music began again, more tunefully this time. A man began to sing,
‘Once a jolly swagman …’

It was a good melody, wistful and jolly at the same time. She smiled as other voices joined in the chorus:
‘Waltzing Matilda, Waltzing Matilda …’

The memory of that one perfect day with her father rose up before her, and the picture of them waltzing their Matilda together. At least she’d had that —

‘Up rode the squatter —’

She froze, then stood and ran to the door. Men clustered around the piano, still with their battered hats on, singing.

‘Up rode the troopers, one, two, three …’

It was her. Her and her father. She stood immobile and unnoticed in the doorway, staring.

‘And his ghost may be heard as you pass by that billabong,

You’ll come a-waltzing Matilda with me.’

The whole bar was singing the chorus now. She stumbled back to her chair and sat.

They’d stolen her most painful, most precious memory and made it theirs. The billabong, the sheep. Her father’s unspoken challenge as he sprang into the water.

But they haven’t got it right, she thought. He didn’t say, ‘You’ll never catch me alive.’ He was challenging their power, not giving up his life. Her father had too much to live for. It wasn’t a jumbuck, either … no swaggie could ever force a ram into his tucker bag, or even catch it unless it was lame or a poddy.

They didn’t say his daughter was there, either. But a girl isn’t important enough to put in a song, she thought. And his ghost …