Dorothy Eden (36 page)

‘I fear she’s killed herself, ma’am,’ came Mrs Jarvis’s voice from a long distance.

Eugenia forced herself to open her eyes.

‘The children,’ she said faintly. ‘Ellen! Keep them away. Emmy, run for the master.’ The strength that had once made her hold Mrs Jarvis’s hand in childbirth, now enabled her to kneel beside this other prostrate figure. She took one of the plump beringed hands and began massaging it feverishly.

‘Get some smelling salts, Mrs Jarvis.’

‘It’s too late, ma’am. The poor lady’s broken her neck. Look how her head lies.’

Eugenia managed to control her sickness. Words erupted from her instead.

‘I always knew she would fall again one day. I’m afraid it’s the wine. She drank too much wine, Mrs Jarvis. Did you know? Night after night she and my husband would sit finishing a bottle. Or two bottles. And today when she was upset after some quarrel they had—she must have been drinking in her room. Can you smell wine on her breath?’

Hard fingers jerked Eugenia back from the grotesque face.

‘Don’t, ma’am!’

‘How silly of me. Of course there’s no breath. She’s not breathing.’ Hysteria was rising in Eugenia. ‘But I know it will be because of the wine. This dreadful fall. It’s one more reason to hate it. Yarrabee burgundy, Yarrabee claret, Yarrabee port. All of them.’ She couldn’t stop talking. The words pouring out of her seemed to ease not only her shock but the weeks and months of strain she had been living through. It was only when Gilbert stood over her, and the body of the old lady whose skirts had been decently straightened by Mrs Jarvis, that she fell silent.

He jerked her to her feet, not ungently.

‘Eugenia, go in the sitting-room. I’ve sent Sloan for the doctor. I think she’d better not be moved.’

‘She can’t lie on the hard floor,’ Eugenia protested, a sob rising in her throat.

‘That won’t make any difference to her now.’

Gilbert’s face had become a stranger’s. Bleak, frozen, tight-lipped, a hard look of tragedy in his eyes. He must be thinking that now he would never be able to make up his quarrel. Poor Gilbert. Remorse was terrible. She had realized that all too well when, a little time ago, the news of Colm’s death had reached her.

The doctor, dusty and dishevelled after the ten-mile journey, expressed it as his opinion that Mrs Ashburton might have had an apoplectic seizure, causing her to fall. But of course there was the sad evidence in her room of two empty claret bottles, a chair tipped over, and other signs of disorderly behaviour.

He begged Gilbert and Eugenia not to be too grieved about the accident for, from the dropsical swellings of the ankles and the gross overweight, he feared that the poor lady could not have lasted long. She had been spared a distressing slow illness that could only have ended in death. In his opinion, she had been taken mercifully.

Gilbert, Tom Sloan, and two men sent for from the convicts’ huts, carried her into the library and laid her on the table there. The doctor said he would send a woman to do the necessary things. She could drive out with the undertaker. In the meantime Mrs Ashburton lay beneath the fringed tablecloth, a vast still mound, and already the house seemed empty without her.

Eugenia kept the little girls with her. She took them in the garden, keeping them outdoors until the sudden dusk fell, and then upstairs where she bathed them herself, and they were allowed the treat of having their supper in bed.

Adelaide seemed unconcerned by the silent haunted state of downstairs. She prattled on as usual about her own affairs. She was a self-important little creature with a mind as direct and unswervable as her father’s. Lucy, however, was completely silent, her eyes unnaturally large, her round cheeks pale, her lips inclined to tremble.

When Eugenia kissed her goodnight she clung wildly to her mother, begging her not to go.

‘She’s afraid,’ Adelaide said with contempt. ‘She really shouldn’t be such a baby, should she, Mamma?’

‘What are you afraid of, my darling?’ Eugenia asked.

The little girl buried her face against her mother’s breast. At last she managed to whisper in anguish, ‘Why doesn’t God take Grandmamma Ashburton away?’

‘But He has taken her away. I told you.’

The little fingers dug into her flesh.

‘He hasn’t. She’s downstairs. Ellen said so. She’s on a table. Why must she lie on a t-table, Mamma?’

‘She’s happy, little one. She has no more pain, no more cares.’

‘She’s singing with the angels,’ Adelaide said. ‘Surely you know that, Lucy. She’s probably holding our baby sister Victoria in her arms.’

‘On the table!’ Lucy whispered, horrified.

‘No, you silly, in heaven.’

Eugenia rocked the child in her arms.

‘Yes, darling, Adelaide is telling you the truth. Grandmamma Ashburton is in heaven.’

That irreverent old creature whom Eugenia was sure had not said a prayer for the last thirty years, whose voice, if she tried to sing, was as croaking and hoarse as a crow’s. What was God and His angels to do with her in heaven?

If she laughed at the impossible vision hysteria would rise in her again. If she cried Lucy would be doubly distressed. If she began to dwell on the fact that Mrs Ashburton’s death was fortuitous for Gilbert since now he could forget their quarrel and her inconvenient demands she would begin to have dreadful suspicions.

The old lady’s death was an accident, of course. But if the question had arisen as to who was to be sacrificed, her or the vineyards, which would Gilbert have chosen? Had he deliberately encouraged her to drink herself into this state of ill-health and incompetence? Who had seen that she had been supplied with two bottles of claret in her room to be consumed greedily in her state of anger and hurt?

Eugenia, again refusing to dwell on questions that were too worrying, thought only that the evenings were going to be very silent. The voices and the hoarse shouts of laughter coming from the dining table after Eugenia had retired to her sitting-room would return like ghosts to the air for a long time to come.

The surprising thing was that although Adelaide and Lucy had been distressed, it was Rosie, that seemingly unemotional child, who was the most profoundly affected by Mrs Ashburton’s death.

It was not until dark that Mrs Jarvis discovered she was missing. When she didn’t appear Tom Sloan and Jem McDougal went looking for her. She would be hiding up in her favourite tree, they surmised. She was a regular tomboy for climbing trees, especially when Master Kit was home.

By midnight she still had not been found, and the search widened. The master joined it. The maids were told to search every room and cupboard in the house. Mrs Jarvis came as near to breaking down as anyone had seen her. She was always calm on the surface, her feelings locked deep inside her. Emmy said she had no deep feelings, but Ellen, older and wiser, said that her self-discipline came from her years of dreadful experiences.

‘Who knows what’s inside the poor creature? Anyway, she doesn’t deserve a little scamp like that Rosie for a daughter.’

It was dawn before the child was discovered, and then of her own volition. She came across the courtyard, a skinny little scarecrow, dragging her feet, straws in her hair and a furtive wild look in her eyes. She said she had slept in a haystack.

When her mother demanded, ‘Why did you do it, you naughty girl? Don’t you know we’ve been up all night looking for you?’ she hung her head, scuffed her feet and said nothing.

‘Rosie! Were you frightened of the poor dead lady? Tell Mammie.’ Mrs Jarvis held out her arms and drew the rigid little body into them. But Rosie still remained silent.

It wasn’t until she had been persuaded to drink some hot milk and a bit of colour had come back to her cheeks that she confessed she had been more frightened of the flying foxes than dead Mrs Ashburton. They had squeaked in a branch above her head. There had been possums, too. She had been afraid one would drop on her and sniff at her with its bulbous pink nose.

She wouldn’t sleep outdoors again, she promised. Or not, at least, until Kit came home. She was recovering her bravado. She didn’t need to confide in anybody.

T
HIS STORY WAS SAD
telling for Sarah in England. Eugenia wrote,

‘Gilbert has been deeply distressed by Mrs Ashburton’s death. He seems to have felt it more sharply than anyone. He says he once promised her a fine tombstone, so this has been ordered, and it is intended to recount all her virtues. To be a little cynical, one of her greatest virtues was her financial help, as she literally has saved the vineyard for Gilbert. Now she has also made him the sole beneficiary in her will. She describes him as the person in this world of whom she was most fond, and this was true. I am even suspicious that her regard for Gilbert was not just maternal although that sounds a strange thing to say of someone of her age. She had become very possessive, and was jealous of their evenings together.

‘Now, however, it appears that her estate was not nearly as large as she had given us to expect. I never did want Mrs Ashburton’s money, and was painfully embarrassed by our debt to her, but I must admit I am now suffering a great disappointment. Gilbert had promised that I could at last have my long-awaited trip home, leaving in the early summer so as to escape the heat, and taking Adelaide and Lucy with me. Now, however, it appears that Yarrabee, that hungry monster, needs all this shrunken windfall, as Gilbert terms it. So once again I must postpone my trip.

‘But I must not complain. We have had the enormous benefit of Mrs Ashburton’s help, and Gilbert tells me that the market for wine is improving at last after the disastrous depression. So let us be optimistic…’

It was sad that there were always secrets to be kept from Sarah, indeed from everyone. For whom could she tell that she now suspected Gilbert’s kindness to Mrs Ashburton had never been for any other purpose than getting her money, that his obsession for his vineyard would drive him to any immorality?

With suspicion nagging at her Eugenia sat across the table from him in the evenings, studying his face for signs of the corruption that this business of viticulture was producing in him. His face was imperceptibly changing. There were lines grooved on either side of his mouth and between his eyes. The sun and wind had bitten into his flesh, leaving it a permanent brick colour, so that the blaze of his blue eyes was startling. His face was even more the map of Australia, Eugenia thought, the blue sky, the stony cracked red earth.

When he sat at the table he had a tense restless look as if he could not wait to get back to his own affairs. Was it because he had a nagging conscience, and constantly saw a bloated genial tipsy ghost in the empty chair between them?

It was, obvious that he genuinely missed Mrs Ashburton. He scarcely touched wine. It wasn’t worth opening a bottle just for himself, he said. But the abstention, or his conscience, made him irritable and explosive. Eugenia thought miserably that they had never been farther apart. She began to allow the little girls to stay up later so that they could sit at the table with Papa for the first course. They nibbled sweet biscuits while the soup was served. Adelaide prattled happily. She adored her father. But Lucy was nervous of his loud voice and his sudden jovial jokes. She hung her head and could scarcely be persuaded to speak.

Gilbert refrained from showing his impatience with her because she was such a perfect miniature of her mother. But he didn’t admire timidity and shyness. He liked his children to speak up for themselves, as Kit and Adelaide did. They were bold and forward and had to be punished frequently, but tantrums were much preferable to timidity.

Kit had written from school,

Dearest Mamma and Papa,

This is a fritful place. I am fritfully unhappy. Mr Jenkins says my spelling is appalling but my sums better. My friend is James Burton. His father has a sheeprun in Victoria. He is fritfully unhappy, too.

Only Rosie may play with my things. Not Addie or Lucy. They are too yung. How is old Erasmus? And old Higgie? James and I are going seeking for gold when we are grown up. I am sorry about Grandmamma Ashburton, but you always said she would fall downstairs one day.

Your loving son, Christopher.

Gilbert roared with laughter at the letter. Eugenia answered it lovingly, ‘My darling, you must work hard at your spelling. And I must ask you not to refer to Miss Higgins so disrespectfully.

Erasmus is well and talking as much as ever. But I wish he would forget the things poor Grandmamma Ashburton said as it gives me quite a turn to hear what seems to be her voice coming from the verandah…’

Then suddenly news arrived from London that at a gathering of wine connoisseurs, Gilbert’s 1834 claret had won special mention. In addition, some bottles of the same vintage sent to that most critical of vignerons, Eugenia’s Uncle Henri in France, had elicited guarded approval from the old man. One couldn’t expect high enthusiasm from France, the vain queen of the wine industry. Uncle Henri’s grudging praise was enough.

This was the turning point, Gilbert said exultantly. Now Australian wines would begin to be recognized in Europe. It made all the anxieties and difficulties worthwhile. Wouldn’t life be dull without this challenging exciting profession? Could Eugenia truthfully say she would prefer him to be a sheep breeder?

Gloom was dispatched. It was impossible not to catch Gilbert’s enthusiasm when he suggested a celebration. They had never had a ball at Yarrabee. Money had always been too short. But now he had a credit with the bank, and an assured future. They could spend a hundred pounds or so on furbishing up the house and hiring musicians and extra servants. The rugs could be taken up in the drawing-room and the floor polished. The room was big enough for thirty couples. Those who sat out could use the library or Eugenia’s writing room, or the verandah. It would probably be a warm night, so people would want to stroll in the garden.

Yarrabee’s first ball…

‘I had always imagined it,’ Eugenia said, her eyes shining.

‘So had I, but I was afraid we might have to wait until the children were grown-up. I didn’t get rich quickly, did I, my love?’