The Noon Lady of Towitta (11 page)

This situation caused me much stress for I was threatened with recall if I couldn't chaperone Bertha at all times and keep her safe. When gossip from a well-meaning friend reached Father about her flirtations, he threatened to bring us home and thrash me for bringing shame on our family. When Mother's friend warned Bertha our father knew about her behaviour and about the likely repercussions, Bertha hurriedly sent Father a note to pacify him. Unlike me she knew how to get round him; my brothers and I never had a chance.

At the Angaston fruit factory I shared my dinner breaks under the trees or a verandah with a small group of unmarried women. Like other factories that employ so many we soon divided into groups. Few of the young women in my group had ever been to Adelaide, so they enjoyed the stories of my adventures. They wanted to know about the family I worked for, a family they had heard about or read about in the social pages of the newspapers. What I wanted more than anything was to share with them stories of the passionate nights I spent with my master, how he held me in his arms and stroked me. But, of course, I did not.

I told them instead about the master's flirting, about him trapping us on the stairs and in the corridors. It's what they expected. They'd heard about this happening to many girls who had gone to work in Adelaide. And so when I told them such things had happened to me, that he caressed my back as I swept the stairs, the girls would clamour, ‘What did you do about it?'

The girls' imaginations were stirred up by my stories; they agreed I was the best storyteller they'd known. I remembered Father's words and told my listeners, ‘The tales are always true and you'd better believe them.'

My new friends wanted more stories. So at night I would think up a new story for the next day about my life in Adelaide. As you can appreciate, I added details that made even everyday chores sound exciting. Although they were never sure where fiction took over from fact, they were starved of tales about Adelaide and happy to imagine my life in a bustling sinful city. They couldn't understand what I was doing in Angaston.

‘Wouldn't you rather be in Adelaide?' they asked.

‘Of course I would.'

I told them that when I was better I expected to return to Adelaide to find another position. Secretly, although I longed to escape there, I knew this was unlikely.

14

‘Tell me of your sweetheart, Mary. How did you meet him? From the photographs in old newspapers at home, I remember him as handsome.'

Sister Kathleen was keen to know where Gustave came into the story. I had been determined to tell as much as possible of my life story before he appeared. But now the time had come for me to talk of him.

Well, he was bronzed by the sun and wind and I thought him handsome. I met him while travelling to and from Angaston, up and down Parrot or Accommodation Hill. He was a year younger than me. Bertha had finished her few weeks at the factory, and I was relieved. On the weekend I accompanied her back to Towitta, I remember Gustave showing off to her. He performed tricks with the horses, and told her of his exploits in Adelaide. Of course she listened intently, smiling and catching his eye.

Gustave Nitschke was a delivery boy who worked for the Schwanefeldts. They were local traders in Sedan with business premises in Adelaide. He would do the rounds of nearby towns and travel to Adelaide about once a fortnight, staying overnight in Carrington Street with relatives of his employer. I often rode home with him when he was going to Sedan. He would turn off the main road and drop me close to the farm before heading through Towitta back onto the main road. Often there were other passengers who paid a shilling or two for the lift.

These journeys took several hours so it was a pleasant opportunity to talk with people one wouldn't otherwise have the chance to speak with. I admired the way Gustave handled the six spirited chestnut and bay horses as I sat up beside him and looked along their sweating backs. He handled them with no harshness or cruelty, with hardly a touch of a whip. When he stopped to give them a rest they looked for his soothing words, titbits and the stroking of their heads. I think it was his kindness and genuine affection for these powerful but gentle creatures that first attracted me to him.

For several journeys we didn't speak, then one day he asked me, ‘Miss Schippan, has the cat stolen your tongue?'

‘Not at all, Mr Nitschke. I barely know you.'

‘Well you should by now. We've travelled together several times, hours spent without a word. You can't sit there in silence any longer. It's quite nerve racking, you know.'

This broke the silence and we began to exchange niceties. I considered him brazen, but I couldn't resist being friendly. He was a sunny kind of person and it wasn't long before we were drawn to each other. It was a long journey after all, and it was difficult to meet suitable young men in such an isolated place.

I liked it best when Gustave and I travelled alone. When the weather was fair and there was just us, he would stop at the top of the treacherous hill with miles of stone walls before the long descent to Towitta and Sedan. He'd tether the horses and we'd go and sit behind a stone wall and gaze at the countryside spread out far below us like a patchwork quilt; different hues of brown or gold in summer and greens and smoky blues in the winter. There was nothing remarkable in the landscape other than the changing colours, and because nothing stood out on the river flats that could create a relief in the landscape, not a shadow fell.

It was on one of these picnics hidden in the long grass in perfect weather that we became lovers. In the winter wind and rain the journey could be treacherous and miserable despite the canvas hood erected for such weather. No matter how bad the weather was, if we were alone we stopped somewhere for an hour or sometimes more. In the covered wagon we made a warm cosy love nest despite the wind howling overhead or a rare downpour of rain.

I was impatient for these breaks when we could be together, looking down onto the flats. We would eat our picnic of fresh crusty bread, cheese and pickled dill cucumbers on an old tarpaulin. The times when we were alone together were rare but we knew how to share in the passion we had found.

Towards the end of the year we were officially a courting couple and Gustave and I made plans for leaving the Murray Plains for good before the heat of summer arrived. He heard about a job that would soon be vacant as a driver for one of the many carrier companies in the city. I had Mrs Waters' reference to help me find another servant's position in the city. We would be able to save enough money to settle down and have our own family. I was over the age of consent and not even Father could stop me. Yet he tried, saying how much Mother relied on me at weekends. He knew how to generate guilt.

On one of these stops I was lying on the tarpaulin. Gustave stood in front of me in rolled-up shirtsleeves with an open neck and a long juicy grass stem in his mouth. ‘What about if we leave here and go to Adelaide at the end of November before it gets too hot,' he suggested. ‘I already have enough money saved for when we live there. I have been saving for years, you know.'

Surprised and pleased I replied, ‘What are you suggesting Gustave Nitschke? Are you intending to make an honest woman of me then?'

‘If you like. We'll find work in Adelaide and wait until our families have forgiven us for running away. They'll want to arrange a proper wedding with all the fuss and bother that entails. They won't take kindly to us running off to Adelaide, you know. Your Father will accuse us of dishonouring and shaming the family and his church and may want us expelled from the congregation. Do you think you can cope with that?' he asked gently. ‘You realise our churches may not allow us back there to be married if we leave our families. And arranging a wedding to suit the two different strands of the Lutheran Church would bring too much bad blood into our families.'

‘When I leave here, I don't care what the church thinks. Anyway, Father keeps reminding us that he can't afford to pay for a wedding for any of us, no matter how humble. Couldn't we have one of those civil weddings or something, or even get married in one of the Lutheran churches in the city? I don't really care how we do it or which branch we choose so long as we leave here. And when I do, I'm never coming back.'

‘You sound harsh.'

‘You have no idea what it's been like to live out here in the middle of nowhere with Father, and nothing to look forward to. Don't you see, I'm at my wit's end. I'm twenty-four now and Father still beats me and chastises me for all my imperfections. Have you any idea of the humiliation?' Gustave couldn't answer that question.

But once we had decided to leave Towitta, nothing further happened. He wouldn't discuss it and I didn't know why. His silence began to wear heavily on my nerves; what had happened to the urgency? Spring was quickly moving towards summer.

These trips to and from Angaston each fortnight had been a highlight which I eagerly anticipated. Maybe because of the strain of our stalled courtship plans, I began having fits again and fainting more often. When the doctor examined me and declared me unfit for work until my health improved, I grudgingly returned to Towitta and my total dependence on Father, having to beg for every item I needed.

There was no doubt that Mother was glad to have me back home, for apart from Bertha and those visiting commercial travellers and hawkers prepared to put up with Father's insults, I was all the company she had. Although our nearest neighbours were less than a quarter of a mile away, sometimes we didn't see anyone for days. When my health rallied I did most of the housework, and also helped with the farm work now that the older brothers had left home and Pauline had died. I was nothing more than an unpaid drudge.

There was always much to do and in my melancholy state, even though Gustave paid me visits, I gradually paid less attention to my appearance. My hair was unkempt. I wore the same clothes for days at a time. Apart from clothes that were worn for best, such as on Sunday when we went to church, I had only one dress and a skirt. I was moody and raging with anger, tightly coiled like a spring ready to be released at a touch. Even Gustave's visits did little to comfort me. Even though he was cheerful, cocky and cheeky I was beginning to doubt him. He never made deliveries to us, but he would make a diversion from the main Towitta track to the farm. He saw me at my worst. My clothes were usually splattered with sheep or pig's blood, and I was often too busy to stop although weary and bored by the same routine, day in and day out. It was at this time of the year, after the crop of new sheep and pigs were born, that Father ordered us to slaughter the older stock. We smoked the meat and made sausages for Christmas, as well as preparing carcasses for sale to neighbours or Towitta villagers. That year the sale of the meat made little difference to the farm finances because of the mounting debts.

Yet my splattered dusty state and lack of interest only seemed to heighten Gustave's desire for me. He sometimes came back in the late afternoon or at the weekends to spend time with us. Sometimes I would trek over to the shady Cowlands Creek or to Towitta Creek and meet him there, far away from Father and Bertha's prying eyes. She liked his visits a little too much I thought. And he stirred her up with promises of visits to Sedan and even to Adelaide. I was not pleased at this form of flirtation with my not-so-little sister who took him at his word.

My parents did not stop his visits but they didn't exactly welcome him warmly. Father's remarks to Gustave were often gruff. I was in my twenties and my prospects of marriage depended heavily on him, yet this grudging acceptance of Gustave, if that's what it was, worried me. I couldn't work out what Father felt about having another man in his territory for he said nothing to me. But he behaved like a jealous lover, handling objects roughly, slamming doors shut and making rude remarks about his daughters being wayward, uncontrollable and the talk of the neighbourhood. Surely he objected to more then the fact we belonged to branches of the church that had been feuding?

As I said, although Gustave had always been affectionate, our relationship changed dramatically after I left the Angaston fruit factory. He refused to talk about us going to Adelaide and I became moody and sullen. One afternoon beside the nearby creek I asked Gustave, ‘Are we still going to Adelaide?'.

‘Of course, Mary.'

‘But when?'

‘I don't know, I have things to do first, things I cannot hurry.'

‘But you have to,' I pleaded. ‘If I stay here much longer I'll go crazy. Father is making my life Hell. Please can we settle on a date?'

‘I'll see what I can do, Mary,' he said, avoiding eye contact.

‘You promised weeks ago, don't you remember? But now there's something the matter, you don't seem so happy to be with me any more. You only come for one thing these days.'

‘Now that's not fair, Mary. I have a lot on my mind, please don't push me.'

‘But I have a lot to think about too,' I wailed. ‘Father never lets me forget that as I no longer bring money into the household, I'm not worth anything, just another mouth to feed. Never mind that I work from morning to night for Mother and around the farm for him.'

‘Look, I've told you I have to work something out. So for now I can't think about leaving here, until at least February.'

I was horrified. I felt betrayed. I couldn't believe that I had to put up with Towitta for at least three more months throughout the hottest and most unbearable months of the year – and with Father. ‘You can't do this to me. You don't love me now that you've had your way with me.'

I demanded he tell me the reason he'd changed his plans. He refused to answer. In my frustration and anger I rushed at him and beat my clenched fists on his chest, crying with rage. He grabbed hold of my wrists and looked straight into my eyes and said firmly, ‘That's how it is, Mary. I'm in a fix which I have to sort out. I can say no more.'