Four Respectable Ladies Seek Part-time Husband Read online

  Had the past not been the past, had they been closer, Louisa might not have said when Adelaide had hurried across the road with soup the day the awful telegram had arrived, ‘Soup! Thank you, Adelaide. I now have enough to fill a dam.’ She might have thrown herself into her former friend’s arms and sobbed her heart out for the loss of her lovely boy. Then again, that might have led to an admission that she and the lovely boy had quarrelled every day they were under the one roof and the only thing they had in common was a passion for the bodies that had attracted them in the first place. Who are you going to tell that to when your reputation is for using your considerable looks to get what you want, then deciding in retrospect that you never much wanted it after all? Not the woman whose boyfriend you stole. Louisa, struggling with nausea and hunger in equal measure, consoled herself only with the thought that her beauty was intact and that she should take it for a walk because the house was suffocating her.

  The possibility of confiding in anyone, let alone either of her neighbours or anyone in their employ, was as far from Maggie’s thoughts as it was from Adelaide’s. Unprotected and un-provided for she most certainly was, but she was strong, she told herself. She could stand on her own two feet, which, tiny as they might be, were the only two feet she trusted. This left her in as splendid an isolation as Adelaide’s and Louisa’s, as she penned a letter to L Murdoch Esquire, husband of Baby Worthington. It was he who had advised her father in his claim against the Bluetts, representing them in court although he wasn’t a lawyer but an accountant. ‘It’s a money matter,’ he had counselled.

  Their feud had come to a head over who owned cattle on the 400 acres each family claimed to own. Shouting had led to threatening, and threatening had led to Adelaide’s father shooting Maggie’s father. Against all advice, Maggie’s father had insisted that a civil case be brought against Adelaide’s father for shooting him as well as for stealing land he could prove was his. He had tended the paperwork in court. It was Mr Murdoch who had recommended that Frank O’Connell accept the generous settlement on offer, and years later it was Mr Murdoch who had written to her father denying any knowledge of the paperwork’s whereabouts. All documents attached to its ownership should be in the town’s municipal offices, he’d explained. He had no idea why it might not be there, because he didn’t have it. In any case, he’d written, surely the matter had been settled to everyone’s satisfaction. Payment had been made, hadn’t it? But payment had only ever been made for the shooting.

  Maggie picked up her pen. Dear Mr Murdoch, she wrote. I have been alerted to the weakness of my position in the world by Mrs Mayberry at the Arts and Crafts Hall the day before yesterday. I would be grateful if you could see me to explain why there is no record of our ownership of the land that was agreed in 1913, because you must have had it when you represented my father in court. Yours sincerely, Maggie O’Connell (Miss). She blotted her letter and read it again. Then she stood and listened in alarm to the silence in the house. ‘Boys!’ she bellowed. ‘Get up. Get up right now! You’re going to school whether you like it or not.’

  Louisa didn’t hear her, although she was heading in her direction. What she heard was Marcus declaiming heatedly to his wife. The words were muffled but their thrust was clear. Had she stopped by the gate she would have heard them exactly. ‘If you’re going to tell me the bloody shop’s losing money, I don’t care. You work it out. You’re in charge.’

  She could not have heard Adelaide reply because there was no reply. Adelaide had retreated in despair, no closer to restoring her husband to the kind if dull protector and provider she’d believed him to be when she married him than she was to accusing Archie Stokes of theft. She had withdrawn to her own lonely room where she lay on the bed to contemplate her hopelessness.

  Pearl contemplated hers as she walked baby Freddie along the river path that led to a bench where she could sit and fret in peace. As difficulties went for a woman in September 1919, her own was on the brink of insurmountable. A second visit to Father Kelly had been short and useless. He hadn’t even admitted her into the presbytery but spoken to her through its half-opened door. ‘I am very busy, Miss McCleary.’

  ‘But I can’t wait until Confession, Father, I need to know. He was looking for the family of a dead soldier. Please, please tell me if he mentioned their name to you.’

  The priest had said, ‘Miss McCleary, you must stop this. It’s not your business and it’s not mine.’

  ‘But did he?’ she’d insisted. ‘He did. What was it?’

  ‘I’m sorry,’ Father Kelly had said, closing the door on her. He’d turned from her – the door was almost shut – when he mumbled, ‘If there was a name, it didn’t belong to anyone in this town.’

  So there it was. There she was. Stuck in Prospect with positively nothing to go on apart from the fact that Daniel had passed through weeks ago and there was a railway she couldn’t get to where he might or might not have headed to be a misfit. She was no closer to him, or the wronged family, or the wicked person who had done the wrong than she had been when she’d left Sydney.

  In her mind’s eye she could see Beattie gasping her last breath, Daniel collapsing in a hail of bullets and Annie inconsolable at their gravesides. In her heart all she felt was the enormity of her own folly. There was a baby in the pram, there was sunshine dappling the town’s famous river nicknamed Chatterbox (motto ‘never dries up’), but did she see them? She was aware that the huge gums smelled of early morning, but only dimly. On the bench she took from her pocket the small leather-bound diary attached to its very own pencil given to her by Beattie last Christmas.

  She turned to the back pages designated Notes, ready to record any that might clear her brain of recklessness and stupidity, any that could form the basis of a plan on which she could act. The wronged family could just as easily live in Bondi. There was no point in looking for them. Would she be any better placed to look for Daniel in Sydney when surely he’d come all the way to Prospect for a very good reason?

  Her pencil was poised over the notebook but she made no notes because the information she had was as sparse as it had always been. She had a missing returned soldier (alive, as far as anyone knew), a cruelly wronged soldier (dead, definitely dead), his family (unknown) and the thug who had wronged them (unknown and possibly dead). The only one she stood any chance of finding was the one whose name she knew. But where? Would Daniel work on a railway?

  She didn’t hear the crunch of twigs under Louisa’s delicate foot any sooner than Louisa spotted the pram and someone not Adelaide in charge of it.

  ‘Hello,’ said Louisa once a greeting became inevitable.

  ‘Hello,’ Pearl agreed. ‘Lovely morning.’ They eyed each other without warmth, since neither had good cheer at their disposal.

  ‘Cold,’ said Louisa. ‘Don’t stand. I’ll sit.’ It hadn’t been her intention but, having sat, she felt a little better. Pearl, she remembered from the night of the speech, sounded surprisingly cultured for a housekeeper. She must be very poor. ‘Recovered from the Mayberry onslaught? Grace and humility! I ask you!’

  Pearl frowned. ‘She was hard on widows, I thought. The pension isn’t going to provide and who’s going to protect?’

  Louisa frowned back. Was the housekeeper intending to discuss money? Surely not. ‘Are you a widow?’ she asked. Pearl was jiggling the pram without appearing to know that she was.

  ‘A spinster,’ Pearl replied.

  ‘But not unprotected. Or un-provided for. Captain Nightingale protects and provides for his entire household.’

  ‘I have a fiancé,’ said Pearl, surprising herself. Her mouth had simply rejected the notion of dependence on a job in a household that had Captain Nightingale at its head. ‘He’s missing.’

  ‘Oh,’ said Louisa. ‘Missing is horrible. My husband was never missing, just dead. I think dead is probably easier. Not that your fiancé will end up dead. Just, ending up dead having been missing is horrible.’

  Pearl said nothing.
She wondered if Louisa wanted her to show an interest in her grief. Would a housekeeper show an interest in her employer’s neighbour’s grief? It didn’t matter. Mrs Worthington couldn’t stop talking.

  ‘I’m sure your fiancé isn’t dead,’ she was gabbling. ‘In any case, he might be missing, but you mightn’t necessarily miss him.’ Good God, thought Louisa. Shut up! The woman would think she was raving. ‘I’m sorry. That wasn’t what I meant to say.’ She waited for offence to be taken but Pearl nodded.

  ‘No, it’s true. He’s been gone so long, I’ve forgotten how to miss him. It’s so much worse for you, having lost the man you married.’

  ‘It is,’ said Louisa softly. ‘And it isn’t. I miss having someone to talk to. Mrs Nightingale is lucky.’

  ‘I’m sure you could join us for morning tea.’

  ‘I meant Captain Nightingale. She has her husband to talk to.’ The remark created a silence and in the silence Louisa reminded herself she’d rather talk to no one than to priggish Adelaide who’d grown even more pleased with herself after her marriage.

  ‘Of course she has. But female company is different,’ Pearl finally said.

  ‘I wouldn’t trouble her,’ Louisa replied. ‘She’s looked so miserable since she had the baby.’

  ‘Just tired. As you must be, with so many horses.’

  ‘Not so many,’ Louisa said. ‘Do you ride?’

  ‘No,’ said Pearl. It left them stranded, as baby Freddie duly noted with a loud roar for which they were both grateful.

  ‘I’ll leave you to it,’ Louisa said and she hurried away, none the wiser about the depth or cause or even existence of Adelaide’s misery. As far as she was concerned Adelaide was lucky, even if Marcus had returned from the war odd and jittery when he’d gone away so solid and proud. Adelaide was lucky because there was a man in her life between her and trouble. She strolled back along the river, dawdling because home was horrible, and diverted because the housekeeper’s admission had been so peculiar.

  It had been very bold to say out loud to a grieving widow she’d met just the once that she no longer cared for her poor fiancé missing in action. She should have asked if she still wrote anyway. William Mayberry had taken her hand and said how important it was to hear from the girls back home, even the girls who weren’t your girls but your friends’ girls. He’d told her how Jimmy had thought of Louisa every time a biscuit had turned up, or a sock. How they’d all thought of Louisa because Jimmy had produced her photo at every opportunity.

  Probably he was dead or she’d have heard, Louisa decided of the fiancé. It was unlikely he’d be missing so long after the armistice, even with the flu and the quarantine. On the other hand, loved ones were being traced to hospitals all over the world so he could be in one of them but just not yet traced owing to terrible burns or a head encased in bandages. Poor man, in a foreign hospital pining for the girl back home who couldn’t care less about him. Louisa took in a deep breath and exhaled easily. A whole half-hour had passed without her heart racing and her breath failing. But now she’d arrived back at her gate and there was Adelaide staring across at her paddock.

  ‘Louisa, surely you don’t have more. I’d swear there are more than there were yesterday. Where on earth are they coming from?’ Louisa cast a very quick look at the land beyond her house, which stretched all the way up the hill to bushland, and thought, Oh God, there are. But rather than flee to her bed, which is what her heart instructed her to do, she smiled bravely at Adelaide.

  ‘Almost certainly,’ she said. ‘It’s very gratifying. I met your Miss McCleary and Freddie down by the river. She’s a treasure, isn’t she?’

  ‘A treasure,’ agreed Adelaide. ‘I hope Freddie wasn’t disturbing the peace.’

  ‘He was as good as gold. She really works miracles with him. Will you keep her, do you think?’

  Adelaide continued to smile. ‘He’s not that bad,’ she lied. ‘And Pearl’s just learning …’ The thought trailed away as she peered down the street. Louisa also peered. ‘Is that smoke?’ They both moved towards the white spiral coming from the O’Connells’ house, the white spiral that was, they now saw, engulfing Pearl who was running towards them, pram in front of her.

  ‘Fire!’ she was calling as if they hadn’t noticed or heard the dreadful boys yelling.

  ‘Look what you’ve done, you stupid galoot!’

  ‘You lit it, you bloody bastard!’

  And over their noise, and the awful racket of incinerating chickens, they could hear Maggie O’Connell crying, ‘What did I tell you! What did I tell you? This is what happens when you don’t go to school. Al, take the bucket and get water from the creek. Hurry up! Ed, get sacks. Look for them. Under the house.’ Her voice was loud and impatient but not hysterical.

  ‘Come out of the flames, Maggie, come out of the flames!’ shrieked one of the boys.

  Pearl wasted no time on words. With twenty yards to go, she pushed the pram towards Adelaide and if Freddie protested she didn’t take time to apologise or soothe him. She dashed back towards the O’Connells’, closely followed by Louisa for whom any distraction was a godsend.

  ‘She’ll need more buckets,’ Pearl called. ‘Go back and get buckets.’ But Louisa was interested only in running towards the excitement not away from it and, in any case, saw no reason to take orders from someone to whom she should have been giving them.

  ‘You run back to Adelaide’s and get hers,’ she said. But Pearl didn’t, because out of habit she trusted herself over anyone else in a crisis.

  This one was short-lived. There was more smoke than fire and though the chook house was beyond help, no one was hurt or even looked as if they might have been hurt, just a few measly chooks. ‘Well done, Maggie,’ Pearl said.

  ‘What, for losing three good layers? For letting the boys stay home from school?’ said Maggie angrily. ‘It’s not well done. One day they’ll kill us all.’

  ‘You should send them away,’ said Louisa sharply.

  The boys stopped shoving each other. They looked from Louisa to Maggie, then from Pearl to Louisa, then from Louisa back to Maggie, faces smeared with ash, eyes wide with shock, still in their pyjamas since they had refused to go to school. ‘Where would we go, Maggie?’ Al finally asked. ‘Who’d want us?’

  ‘I want you,’ said Maggie furiously, before turning on her rescuers. ‘And you two can bugger off.’

  Chapter Four

  Louisa and Pearl might have been mistaken for old friends as they hurried home together, despite Louisa knowing that her mother would never have spoken so freely and for so long to a housekeeper. Yet here she was undeniably comfortable in the company of Adelaide’s, which must account for it. Adelaide employed her, therefore she, Louisa, had no obligation to distance herself. As logic went it was rum, but who cares about rum in the face of unremitting loneliness? ‘It was unbelievably rude, even for an ignorant girl. All I said was the boys were out of control, which everyone knows they are.’

  ‘It was rude,’ Pearl agreed. ‘But she’d had a fright.’

  ‘No excuse,’ said Louisa. ‘The family’s a disgrace. Always has been.’

  ‘Heavens, that’s Freddie,’ Pearl said. ‘I’d better run.’

  ‘What’s wrong with him?’ Louisa asked, keeping up. ‘Crying so much can’t be normal.’

  ‘It’s normal,’ Pearl said. ‘The morning’s upset him, that’s all.’

  ‘He’s always upset,’ said Louisa. ‘I’ve never known a baby be so upset, morning, noon and night.’

  ‘How many babies have you known?’ Pearl smiled at Louisa, a teasing, confident smile.

  Louisa smiled back. ‘Not many.’

  ‘Well then,’ said Pearl. ‘Probably no more unusual than the O’Connell boys playing with fire.’

  But it was unusual. Freddie had been so upset by the morning there really was no consoling him. In Pearl’s absence, Adelaide had jiggled, sung, jumped, skipped, shushed, rocked, shouted, pirouetted and taken the baby into the garden to
point out leaves on bushes, but he’d screwed up his face at everything and bellowed. ‘Block your ears,’ she’d muttered when Marcus had complained from the bedroom.

  As Louisa was asking Pearl if she fancied a cup of tea later that afternoon and Pearl was politely declining, Adelaide was reaching the end of her tether and at the end of that tether was resentment. Pearl McCleary was paid to be here and not with Louisa Worthington at Maggie O’Connell’s, especially when the O’Connells were no friends of the family and nor was Louisa Worthington. Saving the O’Connells’ house was of no concern to anyone in this household when the very best thing that could happen to that miserable place was its total destruction. The O’Connells would move and that would be the end of it. The Bluetts would have won because there would be no O’Connells left to argue about stupid land they said her father had stolen.

  She bounced the baby on her lap vigorously and the baby yelled vigorously. The ten o’clock feed hadn’t been offered until half-past ten, and only yesterday Nurse Fairweather had said, ‘Every four hours, Mrs Nightingale, no more, no less. A baby needs a routine.’ But this baby didn’t know the meaning of the word, Adelaide had tried to explain, and Nurse Fairweather had said it was up to her to teach him. ‘You’re making a rod for your own back,’ she’d said. And look at this morning. No routine at all because Pearl McCleary, who might have calmed the baby, was showing greater concern for households other than the one employing her. Freddie shrieked and spat milk onto her skirt.