She took a chance and asked him.
‘To catch the rain of course,’ he said, looking sideways at her as if she was stupid.
Dulcie explained what a dam was to her.
‘Oh, we ain’t got no rivers or wells out here,’ he said. ‘All we get is the rain, and there ain’t much of that, so we have to save what we can.’
He went on to say how they dug a big hole then waited for rain to fill it up.
Dulcie couldn’t possibly imagine how that would serve any useful purpose, for surely all the water would evaporate in the sun, or disappear back into the ground. But she said nothing, after all she knew nothing of farming.
He turned off the long straight track later, and then she saw a sign with a name on it as if it led to a farm. This happened again later too, but in neither case did she see a house. Then they slowed down and turned at a sign which said ‘Masters’.
‘Is this it?’ she asked. All the way here, behind the gum trees which lined the track, the land had been at least partially cleared. But this part was real bush – trees, boulders and sparse clumps of grass just like she’d seen earlier today from the train window.
‘Yup, this is Masters’ place,’ he said, tipping his hat back and lighting up yet another cigarette. ‘Four thousand acres.’
Acres meant little to Dulcie, but she remembered being told once that the big cattle stations up in the Northern Territory could be 200,000 acres or more, so she supposed this was small by Australian standards.
Finally she saw a barn in the distance and she assumed the house was there too, though hidden by the trees surrounding it. Dejected as she was, she leaned forward to catch her first sight of it, but as the man drove the truck in between two dense bushes, and she saw it, her heart plummeted.
The house wasn’t much better than a shack made of wooden shingle, with a veranda all around it and a tin roof. The shingles were just grey wood, so old and weather-beaten that many of them were warped. The veranda posts looked as though you could lean on them and they’d collapse. But for a washing-line with a few shirts and trousers hanging on it to dry at the side of the house, she might have thought it had been abandoned.
‘Go on round the back and knock on the door,’ the man said. ‘Don’t mind the dogs, they won’t hurt you.’ He leaped out of the truck and disappeared into thick bushes before she could say anything.
The dogs he mentioned came running round from the back of the house as Dulcie got out gingerly. One was a dark russet colour, the other black, and they looked capable of eating her alive. But they didn’t bark or come running up to her, just stood there looking curiously at her.
Dulcie’s whole being wanted to walk away from there, she knew without even setting foot in the house or meeting the owners that this was going to be misery far beyond the level of St Vincent’s. Worse still, she had a feeling that Mother had known what it would be like and had sent her purposely.
But she couldn’t walk away. It would be dark within a couple of hours, she’d never find her way back over twenty miles to Salmon Gums, and even if she got there, a few shillings wouldn’t even buy a ticket to the next halt, let alone a real town. So there was nothing for it but to stay.
The dogs just looked at her as she skirted around the house and went up the steps to the veranda to knock on the back. The door was just a fly-screen, so Dulcie saw the tall, very thin woman coming even before she opened it.
‘You’ll be the girl from the orphanage,’ she said. Her hands were floury and she wiped at her sweaty forehead with her forearm.
Dulcie nodded, intimidated even further by the woman’s harsh voice. ‘I’m Dulcie Taylor.’
‘Well, don’t stand there looking like a great galah,’ the woman snapped. ‘I’m Pat Masters, and there’s spuds waiting to be peeled. Got an apron?’
‘Yes, Mrs Masters, in my case,’ Dulcie said. She couldn’t believe the woman wouldn’t ask her in and offer her a drink before ordering her to get out her apron.
‘Well, get it out and put it on,’ the woman said impatiently. ‘And for Christ’s sakes don’t bloody well call me Mrs Masters. It’s Pat.’
Dulcie was shocked to hear such profanity, that was a caning offence back in St Vincent’s.
She put her case down and took out her apron and she was just putting it on when Pat came out with an enamel bowl with some potatoes and a saucepan filled with water to put them in once peeled. She dumped them on the ground and pulled out a knife from her pocket. ‘Do them here, it’s cooler than the kitchen. Don’t go hacking off great lumps either,’ she said curtly. ‘And do them fast.’ With that she went back inside, the screen door slamming behind her.
Dulcie’s throat was so dry she could easily have drunk the whole saucepan full of water before her, yet she didn’t dare do that or go and ask for a drink, not until she’d finished the potatoes. They didn’t take her very long as she was well used to doing this chore, but because of her thirst it seemed forever. When she had finished she took courage in both hands and walked into the kitchen without knocking first. Pat merely glanced at the potatoes and told her to put them on the stove to boil.
It was incredibly hot and gloomy in the kitchen, and as the temperature outside had to be in the nineties, Dulcie reckoned it must be over 110 inside. She felt she might just faint if she didn’t get a drink quickly.
‘May I have a drink of water, please?’ she blurted out.
‘You can see where the tap is,’ Pat snapped.
Dulcie filled a cup standing on the draining board and as she drank deeply she watched Pat rolling out pastry on the table. She made her think of Olive Oyl, Popeye’s girlfriend, for she was so thin her hip-bones protruded through her thin sleeveless dress, and she had her dark hair pulled up tightly into a straggly bun. It was impossible to guess her age, she could have been anything between thirty and forty-five, but as her leathery skin was unlined, appearing to be stretched too tight over angular cheekbones, Dulcie thought she was on the younger end of the scale and her worn look was due to a very hard life.
‘You can wash up those dishes now,’ Pat barked at her, the moment she’d put the cup down. She indicated a pile of dirty pots and pans on the draining board. ‘There’s hot water on the stove, and mind you don’t waste it, water’s precious out here.’
‘May I take my shoes off?’ Dulcie asked timidly. Pat had bare feet, or she wouldn’t have dared ask.
Pat nodded, looking her up and down. ‘You’ll need to wear them outside though, there’s snakes.’
The relief of taking them off was so great Dulcie didn’t care about the snake warning, but she was put off by the filthy floor. It didn’t appear to have been washed or even swept for weeks – as she went back to the sink she could feel crumbs and bits of meat under her feet.
In fact, once she felt brave enough to look around her, she saw that the whole kitchen was filthy. The walls and windows were thick with grease and dust and when she put the clean pots and pans away in the cupboard she noticed the newspaper lining the shelves was chocolate-brown with age. Yet even more depressing was the sight of a row of hurricane lamps on a shelf, for that meant no electricity, and therefore the stove must be fuelled by wood. Yet they had a refrigerator – she saw Pat opening it – and she wondered what it ran on, but didn’t like to ask for fear of looking stupid.
Pat spoke only once as Dulcie washed up, and that was first to inform her where the ‘dunny’ was, down the path by the back door and tucked behind a bush, then she said the pie she was making was rabbit, and the three men and her husband Bill came in for their meal at six.
Pat disappeared into a room off the kitchen the minute she’d put the pie into the oven, so Dulcie took it that she was to clean the table, because the men would be eating there.
She had been very hungry earlier, but the heat, dirt and exhaustion were making her feel queasy. She wiped the surplus flour off the table, then set to work to give it a good scrub.
Pat returned just as the table was drying
. She merely glanced at it, making no comment. ‘Lay it up for supper,’ she ordered.
‘How many for?’ Dulcie asked.
‘I’ve already told you once,’ Pat barked. ‘Three men and Bill, that’s four, or can’t you count?’
Dulcie wanted to cry then, but she was determined not to. ‘What about you?’ she asked, thinking what about me too, but not daring to go that far.
‘I can’t eat a cooked meal in this heat,’ Pat replied, as if that was Dulcie’s fault. ‘I eat later, and you’ll get yours after the men finish.’
It was nine o’clock when Dulcie was finally shown where she was to sleep, and by then she could hardly move with exhaustion.
The men had come in at six, at which time Pat had curtly introduced her as ‘the girl’. But she might just as well not have bothered because none of them responded, they didn’t even look directly at her.
They were a sorry-looking bunch, they stank of sweat, they were unshaven and filthy. They didn’t even wash their hands, just sat down, grabbed their knives and forks and began eating. Never in her life had Dulcie seen people eat in such a disgusting manner – they shovelled the food in, chewed it noisily with their mouths wide open, speared potatoes with their knives, and mopped up gravy with their bread.
Fortunately it was over very quickly, four plates mopped as clean as if they’d already been washed. Then they went out on to the back veranda for beer and cigarettes.
Not one of them spoke to Dulcie or to Pat, not even to thank her when she gave them second helpings. Perhaps they believed that their loud belches as they finished were enough appreciation for her cooking.
Dulcie gathered that the big dark-haired man was Bill Masters, as he was the one who did most of the talking about the next day’s work. He looked about forty, and slightly ape-like, with a narrow brow, thick lips, swarthy skin and disproportionally long arms.
Jake was the name of the man with the protruding teeth who had picked her up from the station. When he’d removed his hat she saw he had little hair and some horrible red scabs on his scalp that made her feel even more queasy. He appeared to have no status amongst the group, keeping his eyes down at all times.
The other two men were so alike, heavy built, with red hair and beards to match that she thought they must be brothers, but she didn’t catch their names. She wondered if they were relatives of Bill because he wasn’t as curt with them as he was with Jake. Yet whatever their own peculiarities in appearance, to a man they were all coarse types with cold humourless eyes, sun-baked faces and bad teeth, their Australian accents far more pronounced than any she’d heard back at St Vincent’s.
Then Pat dished up her meal. It was the scrapings of the pie crust from around the dish, about a tablespoon full of rabbit filling, two small potatoes, nothing more. ‘Wash up afterwards,’ was all she said, and disappeared into the other room again, taking one of the lamps with her.
Dulcie just looked at the plate and tears ran down her cheeks. It was probably better-quality food than she’d had at St Vincent’s, and around the same amount, yet it was the insult behind it which hurt. It was just the leftovers, and cold now, and it stated that Pat regarded her as on a level with the dogs outside.
The men left the veranda while Dulcie was washing up, she heard the sound of a car starting up and moving away. She looked out of the back door, trying to summon up the courage to run across to the ‘dunny’, as Pat had called it, but it was pitch-black outside and so quiet she was too scared to go without a torch and she didn’t dare take a lamp in case she tripped and broke it. As Pat hadn’t reappeared to give her any further instructions, she swept and scrubbed the kitchen floor.
Pat came back to her just as she’d finished, looked down at the floor but made no comment. ‘I’ll show you where your bed is,’ she said, yawning as if even that was really too much trouble. ‘You’ll remember the way to the dunny, follow the smell.’
That appeared to be an attempt at humour, but in Dulcie’s exhausted state she couldn’t find it funny, and as Pat led the way out through the back door, carrying the lamp, her heart almost stopped in terror.
‘Have I got to sleep outside?’ she exclaimed.
Pat turned to her. In the yellowish glow of the hurricane lamp, her thin taut face looked sinister. Big moths, attracted to the light, swooped around her head, making her even more frightening.
‘You ain’t a guest,’ she said. ‘You’re here to work. Workers sleep outside.’
Dulcie’s case was still where she’d left it on her arrival and she picked it up and meekly followed Pat along the veranda round to the far side of the house. It was too dark now to see whether there were more outbuildings beyond the faint beam of light, or just bush. But as they turned the corner of the house, Dulcie saw a kind of lean-to shed built right on the veranda.
‘This is your room,’ Pat said, pulling open the door. ‘When you hear the bell in the morning get up sharpish. There’s a sink to wash in on the other side.’
Pat was gone before Dulcie could say a word, but she’d had enough time to see a windowless area no bigger than eight by seven containing nothing more than a truckle-bed, a stained mattress, a pillow and a lone blanket.
As Pat retreated back along the veranda, taking the only light with her, Dulcie was too stunned even to cry. She’d been fed scraps like the dogs, now she was expected to sleep like one too, to fumble her way in the dark into a bed that didn’t even have sheets. What had she ever done to deserve such callous treatment?
She stood there for some little time in the darkness, reluctant to go into the shed for fear of spiders or other nasty creepy crawlies, yet afraid to stay outside too. Swaying on her feet with exhaustion, she finally succumbed to the bed, lying down on it fully clothed, but as the smell of stale urine wafted out of the mattress she began to sob.
*
By the end of February, after seven weeks with the Masters, Dulcie had only one constant thought, and that was how to make her escape. Each time she heard the sound of a motor her heart would quicken. Yet it was always only Bill Masters’ truck or Ted’s or Jake’s motorbike, never a stranger who might be distracted long enough for her to slip on to the back of the truck and be taken back as far as Salmon Gums and the train.
No one came here, it was like being marooned on a desert island.
Never before had she seen such vast, intimidating emptiness. She could walk in any direction from the house and see nothing but miles and miles of land stretching right to the horizon where it met the harsh blue cloudless sky. Even the gum trees had a melancholy, stunted appearance, as if they’d struggled to survive but had almost lost the will to do so.
She’d worked hard enough at the orphanage, but looking back at that was like viewing a blissful holiday compared with what she was expected to do here. From six in the morning until nine or ten at night she never had a moment’s respite from heavy labour, or one kind word.
By the end of the second day here she had found out why the house was so dirty and neglected. Pat didn’t only do the cooking, cleaning and washing, she had to work outside too, as hard as any of the men, and Dulcie had to join her.
Dulcie didn’t count feeding the chooks or milking the two rather scrawny cows as real work, she liked both jobs, and milking the cows was remarkably soothing and satisfying once she’d got the hang of it. She didn’t mind cleaning the house either, for there was some satisfaction to be had in making windows sparkle and floors shine.
The wood-chopping was exhausting, every day a huge basket had to be filled, and as the stove would only take small pieces of around six or seven inches in length, the trees and roots the men had cleared on the land had to be chopped or sawn into small pieces. That was hard, but it was the work on the vegetable patch which she hated.
There were no vegetables yet. Bill had cut down the trees and fenced in a plot of land close to the house for this purpose. Pat and Dulcie were expected to prepare it for planting.
It was only about the size of a t
ennis court, but it was full of stones and old tree roots. After the wood-chopping they worked on it until around mid-afternoon, with only a short break to prepare something cold for the men’s midday meal. The ground was like concrete, they had to break it up with a pick-axe before digging it, then rake it, carting the stones in a wheelbarrow to make a drive in front of the house. The roots went for burning on the stove.
Huge blisters came up on Dulcie’s hands, dirt got into them once they burst and they wouldn’t heal. The constant bent position made her back ache intolerably and most days the temperature went over 100 degrees. Pat had given Dulcie a pair of old trousers and a long-sleeved shirt to wear, and an old-fashioned cotton sunbonnet to protect the back of her neck, but there was no sympathy for her aching muscles, sore hands and the infernal barrage of flies in her eyes and mouth.
Many times in the first few days Dulcie had looked at Pat’s cold, dead eyes, mean, narrow lips and skinny body and hated her in a way she’d never thought herself capable of.
It was easy to put all the blame on Pat, for she was the one she had to spend all the time with, and Dulcie knew nothing about men anyway. But by the end of the second week, Dulcie had made observations about the whole group, and by listening to their conversations at mealtimes, and asking one or other of them the occasional carefully worded question, she had begun to see a bigger picture.
She gathered that the two red-headed men, Bert and Ted, were Bill’s cousins and were in the throes of claiming the adjoining lot of land to his. While for now they were helping Bill clear his land, the long-term intention was to work the two parcels of land as one, machinery, labour and profits shared.
The Masters’ land had once been owned by a veteran of the First World War. He had built the homestead, cleared a small portion of the land, then the Depression in the thirties came and like so many other farmers at that time, he just gave up and went back to the city to find work to feed his family. It had lain idle right up until 1952 when Bill had bought it on a conditional purchase at 1s 6d an acre because he was an ex-serviceman. From what Dulcie could gather from overheard conversations, money was very tight now, for Bill had borrowed the money for sheep, machinery, water tanks, and seed and fertilizer for the autumn planting. He was banking on the sheep producing many lambs this year, and a good harvest in the spring, but if there was little rain during the winter, the sheep would starve, the wheat and barley wouldn’t grow and he would be bankrupt.