Wildflower Hill (20 page)

Beattie never exchanged more than polite niceties with Molly, but Beattie began to warm to her nonetheless. She had a softness, a kindness, about her that was genuine. The jealousy still prickled Beattie—the worry that Lucy might grow to love her instead—but it was impossible to harbor resentments against Molly.

In fact, the worst part of the arrangement was that Lucy cried every time Henry dropped her off, asking if she could stay just a little longer. Within a few hours, she would be settled and clingy toward Beattie. But she never stopped talking about Henry, about her room in the house at Hobart, about the toys she had there.

September came, and shearing season was upon them. Wildflower Hill was about to be overrun with extra staff and extra chores. Alice asked that Beattie come and stay for the duration, to save Mikhail running in and out of town for her. Her wage would be doubled for those weeks.

So Beattie was left with the dilemma of what to do with Lucy. She couldn’t expect Margaret to look after her the whole time, and as Beattie would be sleeping on a rolled-out mattress on Alice’s bedroom floor, she could hardly have the girl with her. The answer was clear: Lucy would stay with Henry. Henry used his advantage to turn the two-week stay into a full month, and Beattie could do nothing but agree.

Beattie resisted thinking about the separation until the night before it came. But that night she couldn’t sleep, lying in the bed next to Lucy with her outstretched hand on the little girl’s back to feel her warm, breathing body. A month without her. At least Beattie would be busy with work. But she couldn’t shake the awful sense of injustice: if she didn’t have to work, she wouldn’t have to give up Lucy. If Henry had simply done the right thing from the start . . . But no, she was forgetting that she had stopped loving Henry long ago, and that no matter how wealthy or moral he had become, she was better off without him.

She was exhausted when Henry came early the next morning to fetch Lucy. He didn’t bring Molly, so Lucy was excited to have the front seat of the car. So excited she forgot to say goodbye to Beattie. Beattie watched the car go, then went inside to pack a box for her stay at Wildflower Hill.

Margaret watched her from the door of the attic room. She
seemed agitated this morning, but Beattie didn’t know why. Their relationship had long since cooled, and Beattie mostly avoided her. Finally, she could stand it no longer. “What is it, Margaret?”

Margaret folded her arms. “You’re going to stay there?”

“Yes, as we discussed. I’ll still send you rent. You can enjoy the quiet without us both.”

“Do you know what you’re getting yourself into?”

“I presume it will be a lot of cooking and laundry.” Beattie looked up. “Why?”

Margaret drew a deep breath through her nostrils and said, “Every time you come back from that place, you bring footprints of sin into my house.”

“Margaret, really, I don’t do anything that—”

“You don’t have to
do
anything. It’s what you don’t do. Those who turn a blind eye to the corruption of others are just as bad in God’s view.”

“God would want me to pay for my daughter’s well-being. I have to work.”

Margaret dropped her head and said, so quietly that Beattie almost didn’t hear, “I don’t think you should come back.”

“You’re throwing me out?” She was at once relieved and horrified.

“If I turn a blind eye, then perhaps I’m no better than you.”

“And being better than me is important, is it?” Beattie hefted her box off the bed and set it on the floor. “Very well, I’ll pack the rest of our things and take them with me.” Her heart was beating fast. Could she stay on at Wildflower Hill after shearing season? There would be room for her and Lucy
in the shearers’ cottage, though it would be nothing like the homey comfort of Margaret’s place. Lucy would have to stay all day with Beattie in the kitchen. What would she do with the child at night when she was attending Raphael’s gatherings? Perhaps Alice could help . . . She’d have to write to Henry to tell him to bring Lucy up to the homestead on her return. What would Henry think of the situation?

She glanced up at Margaret. No matter how she felt now, Margaret had provided them with a home when they needed it most. If she allowed herself to remember the warmth between them at the start, this cold change would hurt her too much. It reminded her too closely of the way her own mother had kicked her out, how Cora had never sought to reply to her letters. So instead, she said, “I’m sorry that I’ve become such a burden on you. But I thank you for giving me a chance when I first came to town.”

Margaret wouldn’t meet her gaze. She nodded curtly, then backed out of the room without a word.

Beattie was weary, so weary. Once again the struggle would start. Once again she and Lucy would be thrust into uncertainty.

For the next two weeks, there was no time to think about her situation. She was up at dawn making breakfasts, working right through the day, then slipping off her apron and combing her hair for an evening attending Raphael and his guests as they played poker and drank.

Raphael seemed largely unaware that shearing season was
going on. Everything was organized and run by Terry, the farm manager, an affable red-faced man who always smelled of sweat and horses. Raphael didn’t set foot in the shearing shed, and his only acknowledgment of the frenetic activity on his property was when he grasped Beattie’s hand as she served him a drink one night and said, “Your skin is quite red and raw. You have been working too hard for those ungrateful shearers.”

She extricated herself and kept busy with her work. The busier she was, the less time she had to think. Every night she fell into bed, exhausted, around midnight. Woke six hours later to do it all again.

Then it was over. The shearers packed their belongings and moved on to the next farm, and quiet returned to Wildflower Hill. Beattie still hadn’t found a place to live permanently. When she and Alice went out to the shearers’ cottage to clean up, she decided to sound Alice out about the idea.

“Alice, I’ve nowhere to live anymore. Margaret kicked me out.”

Alice, who was mopping the floor, didn’t even blink. “You can stay here in the cottage.”

“Do I have to ask Mr. Blanchard?”

“I’ll tell him. It’s easier for us if you’re here. The room at the end of the hallway opposite Mikhail’s is the nicest.”

“There’s not a chance that I could stay in the homestead, is there? Like you do?”

“Not with the little one. Mr. Blanchard doesn’t like
children.” Alice straightened up, slopping the mop back into the bucket. “You’ll lose five shillings a week of your pay; six with the child.”

“That’s fine.”

“And you’ll have to buy furniture. A bed of your own.”

Beattie nodded. There was a shop in town that sold castoffs and old furniture, and she’d seen a rug and a bed for sale that she could afford out of her savings. She’d have to make do with fruit crates for chairs. Alice ate all her meals in the kitchen, and Beattie assumed she and Lucy could do the same. Perhaps it wouldn’t be so bad.

Late that afternoon, she slipped out of the laundry for an hour and crossed the paddock to set up her new living space. Until she could get her bed, she borrowed a swag that had been left behind last shearing season and rolled it out on the floor to sleep on. It smelled faintly musty, of the man who had owned it, even though she had already washed it twice. Alice let her take a rickety bookshelf from storage under the house, and Beattie slid Lucy’s favorite books onto it. Outside, the sun withdrew from the fields, blushing the sky pink. There was no fire, so she dared not open the windows to let fresh air in. The room smelled faintly of sweat and disinfectant. She picked a posy of wildflowers from around the edges of the cottage and put them in a cup without a handle on the windowsill. Then she sat on the rolled-out mattress and cried. There was no way to make this room look homely, or welcoming, or inviting to a little girl. Lucy would return from Hobart, from her toy pony and her embroidered linen, to this bare room. Beattie realized a terrible thing about herself: that
she had tried as hard as she could and this was the best she could give her daughter.

A quiet knock at the door roused her. She wiped her face on a handkerchief and went to open it. Mikhail stood there.

“Mikhail?”

He searched her face. She knew he saw the tears, but he said nothing. “You play cards.”

“I’m sorry?”

He reached into the pocket of his threadbare jacket and pulled out a deck of cards.

“Oh,” she said. “No, I . . . I’ve never played.” Though she had watched hundreds of games.

“Is easy,” he said. “Night is very lonely and quiet. You play cards with me. I teach you.”

So she stood back to let him in. They sat on upturned fruit crates and played on top of the bookcase. He patiently stepped her through the rules, and they bet matchsticks. The afternoon turned into night, and Beattie was grateful for his company, for ordinary human warmth when the future seemed so cold.

The next evening, as she was mending one of her slips by the fluttering light of a candle, she heard another knock. She rose and opened it, expecting Mikhail and his deck of cards. But it wasn’t Mikhail, it was Raphael. And he was drunk.

“Beattie!” he exclaimed, putting out his arms to hug her. She sidestepped and he stumbled, righted himself, and shuffled into the room. “I’m so glad you’ve decided to stay with us.”

She wanted to tell him she had little choice, and that in a perfect world she’d keep her daughter a million miles away from him, but instead, she gritted her teeth and said, “I’m very grateful, Mr. Blanchard.”

He sat down on her swag, nearly losing his balance for a moment. He patted the blanket next to him, but Beattie shrank away, stuck her back to the wall by the window. She had never seen him anywhere near the shearers’ cottage before and hoped that after this visit, he would never return again. At least Mikhail was just across the hall if she needed help removing him.

“When are you going to start calling me Raphael?” he asked, pouting like a child.

Alice had told her that he put all his staff—male and female—through this test. The moment they dropped the formal “Mr. Blanchard” or “sir,” he fired them.

“It’s not fitting, sir,” she said.

He looked around. “It’s very bare here.”

She hoped he wouldn’t recognize the bookshelf. “I’ll get some furniture this week.”

“If you sleep with me, I’ll buy you a roomful.”

Beattie’s skin prickled. “No, thank you, sir.”

He lay back on her pillow, sighing. “You are a stubborn thing. I’m determined to have you before I go.”

“Are you going somewhere?”

“I might have to. My father is furious with me.” He looked so vulnerable for a moment, like a little boy, that Beattie almost felt sorry for him. “Is your father ever cross with you, Beattie?”

“My father is dead, sir.” Suddenly, she realized he was
talking about the business, how he’d run it into the ground as Mikhail had told her. Did this mean that her job would soon be gone, too? Her new living arrangements? There were no jobs out there; what would she do if she lost this one?

“Why is your father furious with you?”

Now his face became cruel and hard again, and the dim light drew dark shadows across his brow. “Because he’s a fastidious old prick. Because he’s made of ice and stone. Because he bought this place for me to keep me out of trouble, and I found more trouble. And I’ve not cared much about the business and lost a lot of money. Sheep! Who could be interested in sheep? I wasn’t. I’m still not. And all signs point to rather a disappointing wool clip.”

Beattie’s stomach clenched at his lack of gratitude. Here he was, rich when so many were poor, the owner of a business, a large and beautiful house. And he would let it all go to pursue drinking and gambling. So many people would die for a chance like the one he was throwing away.
She
would die for that chance.

“What will happen to all of us if you go?”

He closed his eyes, and for a few awful moments, Beattie wondered if he’d fallen asleep. How would she get him out of her room? But then he opened his pretty blue eyes and sat up. “Beattie Blaxland, I’d do anything to have a chance with you.”

“You didn’t answer my question. What will happen to all of us? To Alice and Mikhail and Terry and me?”

He shrugged. “There are other farms. You’ll find work.”

“One man in four is unemployed,” Beattie said. “It’s almost impossible for women to get jobs.”

He rose unevenly and came to stand next to her. He grasped her hand, and she couldn’t wrestle it away. His fingers were icy. “I’ll give you a bonus before I go.” He laughed, forcing her hand onto the front of his trousers.

“Mikhail!” she shouted.

Raphael dropped her hand and stood back, narrowing his eyes. “I’d threaten to sack you, only it’s going to be a miracle if you have a job at the end of the year anyway.” He turned and let himself out just as Mikhail arrived at the door.

“It’s all right, Mikhail,” Raphael said to the big man, “her honor is still intact.” Then he was shuffling off.

Mikhail waited until he was out of earshot, then said, “Are you well?”

“Thank you, yes.”

“You should maybe put a bolt on door.”

“Mikhail, he said he’s probably going home soon, that the business has failed.”

Mikhail nodded. “I hear him in the car talking to Mr. Sampson. He will know by beginning of November.”

Two months. Should she look for another job? Move to Hobart with the hope that she could find work? Or should she hang on to this job and hope for the best? At least it was good regular pay. Better than the misery of the dole queue.

Mikhail nodded. “I see what you thinking, and I think same. Terry is talking of leaving. He have no farm manager soon. Alice is also asking other places. Me, I will do same. It is not so bad. We have long time yet. And maybe it won’t happen. Maybe another year.”

Mikhail, Alice, and Terry had no small children to take care
of, though. They could easily follow the work around. Lucy needed stability.

“I hope you’re right, Mikhail,” she said. “Just one more year.”