and paltry
persecution. The squatter would get as much freehold
as he could afford, `select' as much land as the law allowed one man
to take up, and then employ dummies (dummy selectors) to take up bits of land
that he fancied about his run, and hold them for him.
Spicer seemed
gloomy and unsociable. He was seldom at home.
He was generally
supposed to be away shearin', or fencin', or workin'
on somebody's station. It turned out that the last six months he was away
it was on the evidence of a cask of beef and a hide with the brand cut out,
found in his camp on a
fencing contract up-country, and which he and his mates
couldn't
account for
satisfactorily, while the squatter could.
Then the family lived
mostly on bread and honey, or bread and treacle,
or bread and dripping, and tea. Every ounce of butter and every egg
was needed for the market, to keep them in flour, tea, and sugar.
Mary found that out, but couldn't help them much -- except by
`stuffing' the children with bread and meat or bread and jam
whenever they came up to our place -- for Mrs Spicer was proud with the pride
that lies down in the end and turns its face to the wall and dies.
Once, when Mary asked Annie, the
eldest girl at home, if she was hungry,
she denied it -- but she looked it. A
ragged mite she had with her
explained things. The little fellow said --
`Mother told Annie not to say we was hungry if yer asked;
but if yer give us anythink to eat, we was to take it an' say thenk yer,
Mrs Wilson.'
`I wouldn't 'a' told yer a lie; but I thought Jimmy would split on me,
Mrs Wilson,' said Annie. `Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson.'
She was not a big woman. She was gaunt and flat-chested,
and her face was `burnt to a brick', as they say out there.
She had brown eyes, nearly red, and a little wild-looking at times,
and a sharp face -- ground sharp by
hardship -- the cheeks drawn in.
She had an expression like -- well, like a woman who had been
very curious and
suspicious at one time, and wanted to know
everybody's business and hear everything, and had lost all her curiosity,
without losing the expression or the quick
suspicious movements of the head.
I don't suppose you understand. I can't explain it any other way.
She was not more than forty.
I remember the first morning I saw her. I was going up the creek
to look at the
selection for the first time, and called at the hut
to see if she had a bit of fresh
mutton, as I had none
and was sick of `corned beef'.
`Yes -- of -- course,' she said, in a sharp nasty tone, as if to say,
`Is there anything more you want while the shop's open?'
I'd met just the same sort of woman years before while I was carrying swag
between the shearing-sheds in the awful scrubs out west of the Darling river,
so I didn't turn on my heels and walk away. I waited for her to speak again.
`Come -- inside,' she said, `and sit down. I see you've got
the
waggon outside. I s'pose your name's Wilson, ain't it?
You're thinkin' about takin' on Harry Marshfield's
selection up the creek,
so I heard. Wait till I fry you a chop and boil the billy.'
Her voice sounded, more than anything else, like a voice
coming out of a
phonograph -- I heard one in Sydney the other day --
and not like a voice coming out of her. But sometimes when she got outside
her
everyday life on this
selection she spoke in a sort of --
in a sort of lost groping-in-the-dark kind of voice.
She didn't talk much this time -- just spoke in a
mechanical way
of the
drought, and the hard times, `an' butter 'n' eggs bein' down,
an' her husban' an'
eldest son bein' away, an' that makin' it
so hard for her.'
I don't know how many children she had. I never got a chance to count them,
for they were nearly all small, and shy as piccaninnies,
and used to run and hide when anybody came. They were
mostly nearly as black
as piccaninnies too. She must have averaged a baby a-year for years --
and God only knows how she got over her confinements! Once, they said,
she only had a black gin with her. She had an elder boy and girl,
but she seldom spoke of them. The girl, `Liza', was `in service in Sydney.'
I'm afraid I knew what that meant. The elder son was `away'.
He had been a bit of a favourite round there, it seemed.
Some one might ask her, `How's your son Jack, Mrs Spicer?'
or, `Heard of Jack
lately? and where is he now?'
`Oh, he's somewheres up country,' she'd say in the `groping' voice,
or `He's drovin' in Queenslan',' or `Shearin' on the Darlin' the last time
I heerd from him.' `We ain't had a line from him since -- les' see --
since Chris'mas 'fore last.'
And she'd turn her
haggard eyes in a
helpless,
hopeless sort of way
towards the west -- towards `up-country' and `Out-Back'.*
--
* `Out-Back' is always west of the Bushman, no matter how far out he be.
--
The
eldest girl at home was nine or ten, with a little old face
and lines across her
forehead: she had an older expression than her mother.
Tommy went to Queensland, as I told you. The
eldest son at home,
Bill (older than Tommy), was `a bit wild.'
I've passed the place in smothering hot mornings in December,
when the droppings about the cow-yard had crumpled to dust
that rose in the warm,
sickly,
sunrise wind, and seen that woman at work
in the cow-yard, `bailing up' and leg-roping cows, milking,
or hauling at a rope round the neck of a half-grown calf
that was too strong for her (and she was tough as
fencing-wire),
or humping great buckets of sour milk to the pigs or the `poddies'
(hand-fed calves) in the pen. I'd get off the horse and give her
a hand sometimes with a young steer, or a cranky old cow
that wouldn't `bail-up' and threatened her with her horns. She'd say --
`Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. Do yer think we're ever goin' to have any rain?'
I've
ridden past the place on bitter black rainy mornings in June or July,
and seen her trudging about the yard -- that was ankle-deep
in black
liquid filth -- with an old pair of Blucher boots on,
and an old coat of her husband's, or maybe a three-bushel bag
over her shoulders. I've seen her climbing on the roof
by means of the water-cask at the corner, and
trying to stop a leak
by shoving a piece of tin in under the bark. And when I'd fixed the leak --
`Thenk yer, Mr Wilson. This drop of rain's a blessin'!
Come in and have a dry at the fire and I'll make yer a cup of tea.'
And, if I was in a hurry, `Come in, man alive! Come in!
and dry yerself a bit till the rain holds up. Yer can't go home like this!
Yer'll git yer death o' cold.'
I've even seen her, in the terrible
drought, climbing she-oaks and apple-trees
by a makeshift
ladder, and
awkwardly lopping off boughs
to feed the starving cattle.
`Jist tryin' ter keep the milkers alive till the rain comes.'
They said that when the pleuro-pneumonia was in the district
and
amongst her cattle she bled and physicked them herself,
and fed those that were down with slices of half-ripe pumpkins
(from a crop that had failed).
`An', one day,' she told Mary, `there was a big
barren heifer
(that we called Queen Elizabeth) that was down with the ploorer.
She'd been down for four days and hadn't moved, when one mornin'
I dumped some wheaten chaff -- we had a few bags that Spicer brought home --
I dumped it in front of her nose, an' -- would yer b'lieve me, Mrs Wilson? --
she stumbled onter her feet an' chased me all the way to the house!
I had to pick up me skirts an' run! Wasn't it redic'lus?'
They had a sense of the
ridiculous, most of those poor sun-dried Bushwomen.
I fancy that that helped save them from madness.
`We lost nearly all our milkers,' she told Mary. `I remember one day
Tommy came
running to the house and screamed: `Marther! [mother]
there's another milker down with the ploorer!' Jist as if it was great news.
Well, Mrs Wilson, I was dead-beat, an' I giv' in. I jist sat down
to have a good cry, and felt for my han'kerchief -- it WAS
a rag of a han'kerchief, full of holes (all me others was in the wash).
Without seein' what I was doin' I put me finger through one hole
in the han'kerchief an' me thumb through the other, and poked me fingers
into me eyes, instead of wipin' them. Then I had to laugh.'
There's a story that once, when the Bush, or rather grass, fires were out
all along the creek on Spicer's side, Wall's station hands
were up above our place,
trying to keep the fire back from the boundary,
and towards evening one of the men happened to think of the Spicers:
they saw smoke down that way. Spicer was away from home,
and they had a small crop of wheat, nearly ripe, on the
selection.
`My God! that poor devil of a woman will be burnt out, if she ain't already!'
shouted young Billy Wall. `Come along, three or four of you chaps' --
(it was shearing-time, and there were plenty of men on the station).
They raced down the creek to Spicer's, and were just in time
to save the wheat. She had her sleeves tucked up, and was
beating out the burning grass with a bough. She'd been at it for an hour,
and was as black as a gin, they said. She only said when they'd turned
the fire: `Thenk yer! Wait an' I'll make some tea.'
. . . . .
After tea the first Sunday she came to see us, Mary asked --
`Don't you feel
lonely, Mrs Spicer, when your husband goes away?'
`Well -- no, Mrs Wilson,' she said in the groping sort of voice.
`I uster, once. I remember, when we lived on the Cudgeegong river --
we lived in a brick house then -- the first time Spicer
had to go away from home I nearly fretted my eyes out.
And he was only goin' shearin' for a month. I
muster bin a fool;
but then we were only jist married a little while. He's been away
drovin' in Queenslan' as long as eighteen months at a time since then.
But' (her voice seemed to grope in the dark more than ever) `I don't mind, --
I somehow seem to have got past carin'. Besides -- besides,
Spicer was a very different man then to what he is now.
He's got so moody and
gloomy at home, he hardly ever speaks.'
Mary sat silent for a minute thinking. Then Mrs Spicer roused herself --
`Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about! You mustn't take any notice of me,
Mrs Wilson, -- I don't often go on like this. I do believe I'm gittin'
a bit ratty at times. It must be the heat and the dulness.'
But once or twice afterwards she referred to a time `when Spicer was
a different man to what he was now.'
I walked home with her a piece along the creek. She said nothing
for a long time, and seemed to be thinking in a puzzled way.
Then she said suddenly --
`What-did-you-bring-her-here-for? She's only a girl.'
`I beg
pardon, Mrs Spicer.'
`Oh, I don't know what I'm talkin' about! I b'lieve I'm gittin' ratty.
You mustn't take any notice of me, Mr Wilson.'
She wasn't much company for Mary; and often, when she had a child with her,
she'd start
taking notice of the baby while Mary was talking,
which used to
exasperate Mary. But poor Mrs Spicer couldn't help it,
and she seemed to hear all the same.
Her great trouble was that she `couldn't git no reg'lar schoolin'
for the children.'
`I learns 'em at home as much as I can. But I don't git a minute
to call me own; an' I'm ginerally that dead-beat at night
that I'm fit for nothink.'
Mary had some of the children up now and then later on,
and taught them a little. When she first offered to do so,
Mrs Spicer laid hold of the handiest
youngster and said --
`There -- do you hear that? Mrs Wilson is goin' to teach yer,
an' it's more than yer deserve!' (the
youngster had been `cryin''
over something). `Now, go up an' say "Thenk yer, Mrs Wilson."
And if yer ain't good, and don't do as she tells yer, I'll break every bone
in yer young body!'
The poor little devil stammered something, and escaped.
The children were sent by turns over to Wall's to Sunday-school.
When Tommy was at home he had a new pair of elastic-side boots,
and there was no end of rows about them in the family --
for the mother made him lend them to his sister Annie,
to go to Sunday-school in, in her turn. There were only
about three pairs of anyway
decent boots in the family,
and these were saved for great occasions. The children were always
as clean and tidy as possible when they came to our place.
And I think the saddest and most
pathetic sight on the face of God's earth
is the children of very poor people made to appear well: the broken
worn-out boots polished or greased, the blackened (inked) pieces of string
for laces; the clean patched pinafores over the
wretched threadbare frocks.