The Grass Castle (35 page)

‘It did; all my savings. It was for a special dance. Ridiculous to put such store by a ballgown—but we didn’t have many luxuries in those days, and it was my one indulgence.’

‘Your parents didn’t help pay for it?’

‘Oh no. Definitely not. I was planning to wear it for the wrong person, you see. Not Doug, but another young man, called Stewart White. The dress was never for Doug, but in a way it led me to him.’ She spreads her fingers over the fabric. ‘I suppose that’s why I’ve never been able to throw it out. It reminds me of the way life tosses up surprises. You think everything is going wrong, but somehow you end up in the right place.’

Abby looks confused. ‘So that’s the story, is it?’

Daphne smiles. ‘That’s just the beginning.’ She orders the saga in her mind and begins to tell it to the girl.

She met Stewart White at the picnic races the year she turned twenty-three. He was a working stockman recently arrived in the region, and he was the talk of the district, quite a horseman, very flashy, and capable of racing fast horses to convincing victories at local meets. Not only was he persuasive with horses, Daphne had heard, but he was also very charming. Apparently he was clean-shaven too, which was rather a novelty for men who weren’t gentry. At that stage, Daphne hadn’t yet encountered him, but she knew he was riding for one of the rich landowners at that year’s races.

Although her family wasn’t one of the wealthiest in the region, Daphne’s father had managed to accumulate a good swathe of land, and it was common knowledge that his daughter was single and available. Daphne hated the price tag she seemed to be wearing on her forehead, and she disliked the direct and enquiring looks she attracted from many of the unattached local bushmen—including Doug Norrington, who her parents considered to be high up in the eligible-bachelor stakes. Doug was the son of their neighbour, and her parents kept referring to the wisdom of a
strategic match
which would bring their two landholdings together and secure the family’s status in the area. Daphne wasn’t interested. To her mind, Doug Norrington was stiff-backed and serious, brooding behind that beard, and he seemed eternally entrenched in staid silence. Daphne had so much more living to do.

The local races were the domain of the big-name upper-class families who used the occasion to parade their wealth. They set the dress standards, and the bushmen and their families turned out in their best too, so as not to be completely outdone. The men wore thick woollen suits and starched white shirts, carefully secured at the neck with Windsor-knotted ties over which their bushy beards bristled. The women came in neatly pressed bright frocks and carried flowers and wore hats crafted by their own hands.

Daphne’s dress that day was none too fancy, but it was clean and fresh and white and flattering. And somehow, perhaps by sheer youthful exuberance and glowing health, she must have stood out among the crowd, because she was the one who drew Stewart’s gaze—not any of the other girls who were vying for his attention.

Her father had entered a horse in the main race—a half-tamed chestnut brumby mare with more than a touch of wildness in her. He was the only one who could ride her, and she had been a disaster on the farm since they’d brought her down from the mountains, wrecking fences and cutting herself, kicking and injuring other horses, biting the workmen. Nobody liked her and no-one went near her.

The mare was a handful at the starting line, and Daphne was afraid her father would be thrown. When the start gun was fired, the mare reared up, threatening to keel over before regaining balance and plunging into a mad gallop. By then the other horses had leapt away and she was some distance behind, but she ran with huge frantic strides, and Daphne knew she would soon catch the field.

Daphne was standing with the crowd near the finish line, watching the horses bolt up-slope and across the hill around the set course. She could hear the sound of hooves drumming on the ground like a miniature earthquake. Around her, people were discussing their bets and chances. They’d already written off her father’s mare, and everyone was focused on young Stewart White who was pushing an expensive bay stallion into the lead. Daphne was the only one who watched her father as he crouched over the chestnut mare’s wither. She saw he was struggling with the mare. Madness had taken the horse’s mind and she was hell-bent on her own course, swinging wide on all the corners, adding distance to the race and giving Daphne’s father a hard time as he dragged on the reins to turn her. Even so, she made quick work of catching the other horses, but refused to shoulder in among them, running her own race instead, against some invisible demon.

The field threaded its way uphill and around a patch of trees before taking up the final charge for the finish line. Daphne’s father lost ground in the turn, fighting for dominance until the mare settled again and started to run. By this time, Stewart, on the bay stallion, had pounded out in front and was stretching for the finish. Daphne felt the crowd rise with adrenalin, the encouraging yells intensifying. She elbowed her way through so she could see, hooking Doug Norrington in the ribs as she pushed past. She remembers him looking down at her, a dark serious light in his eyes and a small flash of white as he showed his teeth in a grin beneath his beard.

Then she was at the front, and her father’s chestnut mare had caught up with Stewart on the bay, and the horses were straining stride-for-stride. The mare nosed into the lead and Daphne could see her father like a dark burr over the mare’s back, the white gleam in the mare’s eyes as she tore for the finish. Then some primitive part of the mare’s wild brain must have registered the mass of people milling ahead of her, and she threw up her head and careered crazily sideways, lurching onto another trajectory which did not lead to the finish.

Daphne watched, dismayed, as the mare bolted away while Stewart rode over the line an easy first. The rest of the pack thundered past, riders standing in the stirrups to haul up their steeds. Daphne was caught among the throng of people jostling to see Stewart as he trotted back on the champion bay, and she heard him say
I thought I was beat
.

Of course he was beat. The mad mare was undoubtedly faster, but she was an undisciplined child, incapable of being persuaded to a different set of rules.

Daphne watched the crowd surround Stewart on the bay stallion, then she moved aside to wait for her father. Halfway up the hill, he had managed to reef the mare under control and was now jogging slowly back. When he pulled up beside her, his eyes were alight with anger. Daphne grabbed the reins while he hurled himself off and strode to the drinking tent to drown his embarrassment. Daphne felt for her father. She wished she could console him, and she knew it wasn’t losing that mattered, so much as the manner in which the mare had defeated him. She could imagine the humiliation that was grating beneath his skin.

The mare was jumpy and hot, sweaty and blowing. Daphne lifted the reins over the horse’s head, ignoring the spattering of sweat and foam that flicked onto her dress. She led the mare across the paddock and unsaddled her behind the old truck, leaving the saddle, pommel-down, on the bonnet.

She had taken the mare to the trough for a mouthful of water when Stewart appeared. The mare fidgeted sideways, dancing on nervous hooves.

‘That’s some horse,’ Stewart said, as Daphne tugged on the reins to check the silly mare. ‘She should have won,’ he added. ‘Had me cooked.’

‘Tell that to the old man,’ Daphne said, nodding towards the drinking tent. ‘He’s in there drowning his sorrows.’

‘Nobody could control that horse,’ Stewart said. He had his thumbs hooked in his trouser pockets and a lazy smile on his face as he inspected Daphne and the mare. ‘Looks like you know how to handle her though.’

He came closer and reached a hand to touch the mare’s shoulder, but the horse lunged at him and bit him hard on the leg, and he leapt back, cursing. Mortified, Daphne jerked at the mare’s head, tugging her back.

Stewart managed a grin before he turned away. ‘When you get rid of that horse, come and find me. I’ll buy you a drink.’

Daphne watched him stride off towards the crowd, a strange hot storm of embarrassment and excitement brewing in her chest. She released the mare in a vacant wooden corral and went to find her father, who was already a drink or two down, sitting at a table with a few other bushmen. They were in full cry, unpicking the mare’s wild race, so Daphne avoided them and wandered off in search of her mother.

Stewart intercepted her behind the betting tent. He emerged smiling from a fist of people and stood examining her like a horse at a saleyard. For a moment Daphne bristled then Stewart’s swagger softened and he offered his arm as an invitation. ‘A drink, young lady?’

‘I’d prefer to walk,’ she said.

His grin was wide and confident. ‘Walk then it is,’ he said.

She slipped her arm through his and they walked around the paddock.

He must have been sweaty after his race, she later supposed. But what she recalled was his buoyant attentiveness, the way his eager eyes rested on her face as she talked, the way his fingers drizzled slowly along her arm, arousing all sorts of scintillating sensations. They must have made several laps of the field together, talked about the race and the crazy mare and a number of other matters which she no longer recollects.

The other thing she remembers is running into Doug Norrington as they strolled along. He appeared from nowhere, his eyes glowering and his mouth invisible within his beard. Daphne felt disapproval and disappointment emanating from him in waves. ‘The mare needs some attention,’ he said gruffly. ‘Your father’s had one too many and the weather’s cooling down. The mare needs walking. You should see to it.’

Daphne went to check the mare, who was standing peacefully in the yard, head lowered, exhausted after the day’s escapade. Daphne knew then that Doug’s intervention had more to do with jealousy than his interest in the horse, but she hadn’t the motivation to seek him out and reprimand him. No matter what Doug Norrington hoped for, the seeds of her attraction to Stewart had already been planted, and Doug’s impact was less than that of a nuisance fly.

Stewart began to visit regularly at the family farm after that, arriving with flowers and compliments and cheeky propositions and kisses behind the shearing shed, and Daphne was consumed by the romance of it. Stewart was physical and insistent. When he kissed her, he pressed his tongue into her mouth and his groin against her stomach. He wanted to put his hands beneath her clothes, expected it, cajoled her into lifting her blouse so he could touch her skin.

Daphne was torn. She wanted to please him—there was status to be had with the local girls through the simple fact of holding his attention. But there was something not quite right about the way he pushed himself upon her. Even so, she was shyly overwhelmed by his affections, by the romantic things he said: how much he loved her, how much he desired her, how beautiful she was, how wildly he wanted to press her to the ground and cover her with his kisses. During the day she would imagine herself with him and become quite carried away by her thoughts. At night she would wake all hot and shaky, with new emotions and raw sensations rippling beneath her skin, urges that arose from her imaginings, thoughts of his hands on her naked body.

But it was never the same when she was with him. He was hurried, rough. He kept asking her to take off her clothes, kept saying that O God he couldn’t wait for her much longer, he was so desperate to join with her.

It was all so intense, and she felt it in her bones at night that she needed this union too, that it would be beautiful. And yet something held her back. Was she afraid? Was she capable of delivering what he was asking? Or was she a mummy’s girl, too polite to give in to her emotions? The thought alarmed her, that she might be as staid and correct as boring Doug Norrington. Then she realised she needed
atmosphere
, a suitable occasion to give herself to Stewart. The local dance was coming up, and that would be the night. She would use her savings to buy a dress that exceeded all dresses. She would entrance Stewart and dance for him, and then she would give in to him somewhere out in the paddock that night up in the darkness of the hill. They would be locked together, discovering each other. Then they would get married—that was the natural way of things—and they would have children.

She found the fabric on a visit to Queanbeyan and she guiltlessly handed over all her savings to buy it and have the gown made. It was a shocking indulgence, she knew it. But when she brought the dress home a week before the dance, and tried it on, and twirled around the house feeling beautiful, she was convinced the sacrifice was justified.

Her parents were disappointed she wasn’t going to the ball with Doug. They didn’t like Stewart and they were, at best, stiffly polite with him whenever he visited the farm, eternally suspicious of his effusive compliments. But Daphne needed a chaperone to accompany her to the dance, and she was thankful that her father agreed to take her, despite his obvious disapproval.