Freedom's Land (35 page)

Irene couldn’t hold back the tears. ‘You’re so kind. Everyone’s been kind to me.’

‘Gil looked after me when I was a lass, so if he says you need help, I’m happy to oblige. What sort of world would it be if we thought only of making money?’

There it was again, Irene thought, someone praising Gil. What a lovely man he was! Her thoughts hovered like butterflies for a moment as she realised that she hated the thought of not seeing him again, but she couldn’t dwell on that, had too much to do.

With Nelly’s help, she found a job within two days, working as a general help in one of the bigger houses. She could walk there from her lodgings and they treated her kindly enough. The lady of the house even gave her some clothes that would fit round her stomach, which was expanding more rapidly than she’d expected.

After some argument, Nelly agreed to accept a couple of shillings a week for the room and further money towards food.

Irene tried to make the best of her new life, but the evenings were lonely, sitting in her little room, staring out at the garden. Nelly invited her to join them, but she didn’t do that every evening. They had a right to their family life.

To her surprise, she missed the farm more than she had expected, missed the other groupies . . . missed Gil most of all. He had been there, solid as a rock, a true friend, and now she was on her own.

Oh, she was wanting the moon. You couldn’t have everything, could you? She’d turned down his offer and still felt it had been the right thing to do. There were no jobs in Northcliffe and here she’d found one easily. What if she did have to look out on to the next house’s side wall from her little bedroom instead of at trees and slopes? What if she didn’t hear birdsong when she woke, or smell the tang of eucalyptus leaves crushed underfoot as she walked through the edges of the bush?

There was one thing that still worried her. How was she to care for the baby after it was born and earn a living for them both? There’d be no Gil to help her solve those problems.

No use meeting trouble before it met you. There were several months to go. She’d just count her blessings and save her pennies. She was grateful she’d managed so well. Very grateful.

‘If you move on Sunday,’ Gil told Andrew, ‘I’ll bring my cart and help you.’

‘Thank you. I was going to ask if we could borrow it.’

‘You can borrow me, too.’

On the Sunday morning, Gil turned up early and with everyone pitching in, they made short work of clearing out the humpy. Well, they’d not had a chance to accumulate many possessions, just the bits of furniture Andrew had made from the crates food and kerosene arrived in.

At noon, Norah provided a quick meal, then they set to work again. The men were dismantling the cowshed and dairy, then the other rough shelters for the pigs and hens. She went across to her new home to start unpacking, but found the lean-to and humpy very lacking in shelves and other small conveniences a man’s clever fingers could provide, so she set up the stretcher beds and made them up ready for tonight. Andrew would sort out the other problems over the next few days.

At the old farm, the children were in charge of catching the hens, and did this with much laughter. Then the three of them walked across to the new farm, each carrying a hen, with Janie crooning to Fluffy and the little hen nestling against her.

They set the chooks down in their new homes and checked to make sure they couldn’t escape, then watched them exploring, pecking everything in sight.

‘Dad’s buildings and fences were much better than these!’ Jack said scornfully. He picked up a stone and hammered one of the fence poles into the ground more securely.

All the animals seemed mildly indignant at the changes to their lives, even the cows swishing their tails more than usual. They stopped so many times that it took ages to get them into their new enclosure, where they lowed dolefully as if hard done to.

‘He didn’t make much cop of this place, did he?’ Gil said to Andrew, looking at the wobbly fences and trying not to think of Irene.

‘No. He’d never have made a farmer, poor fellow. He was a townie to the core.’

Gil insisted on working right through until dark, but refused to join them for the evening meal.

‘This place reminds him too much of Irene,’ Norah said to Andrew as they settled down to sleep. ‘He’s missing her.’

‘I’d miss you if you went away.’ He reached out and fumbled for her hand, holding it.

She smiled in the darkness, then her mind turned back to their next tasks.

‘Tomorrow Janie and I will move as many of the plants as we dare.’

‘Move them all. They might survive. What have we to lose?’

‘I’d rather leave them for the next people than destroy them. Some are far too big to move.’ She sighed happily. ‘We’ve been so lucky, haven’t we?’

But his hand had gone slack in hers and his breathing had deepened. Her bed was close enough for her to tuck his hand under his covers, then she snuggled down. She was longing to share a double bed with him properly, and for them all to have a more normal home life.

Well, it would come. They were over the worst now, surely?

22

T
he rest of the winter seemed to pass very quickly to the hard-working groupies. Men worked all day for the Board, then all evening for themselves, making furniture from anything to hand ready for the coming move into proper four-roomed houses – even though they’d not yet been given a date for these to be built.

Women worked at anything needed, whether it was men’s work or not, and in the evenings they sewed or taught their children. Some were determined not to let their education lapse, others weren’t worried about schooling, thinking more of the contribution the children’s work could make to establishing the farm. All the youngsters did their share, willingly or not, working far harder than most of them had ever done in their lives before.

Each family now had six cows and the Boyds seven, because somehow Gil had managed not to account for the first cow sent to the group. Life centred on getting the cows milked and the cream to the gates for the pickup truck. The few shillings a week the cream brought were very important to everyone.

Another family walked off their block in August, which made everyone feel let down. Why hadn’t they asked for help? Everyone knew they weren’t happy. They simply didn’t have the right touch with animals or a feeling for the land, and the misery on their faces showed they knew it. But you couldn’t force your help or advice on people, now could you?

The family didn’t tell anyone what they were planning. One morning before it was light they trekked into Northcliffe and begged a lift into Pemberton, abandoning their furniture – a pitiful collection of oddments – and taking only their clothes and blankets.

They left debts behind, but they didn’t leave a word of explanation or thanks for the help that had been freely offered to them.

Gil took charge of those possessions worth salvaging and suggested he sell what they could and put the money towards something the whole group could use. He knew he should have reported these items to the Board and given the meagre proceeds to the bank which was funding the groupies. But he felt the bank had enough money and his groupies were working so hard they deserved what little extra he could squeeze out for them.

It’d been like that in the Army. You learned what you could and couldn’t do to bend the rules and regulations. He hadn’t done that to be greedy nor had he taken things for his own profit, but to make himself and the lads – all of whom might die the next hour, the next day – happier or more comfortable.

When he reported the family’s disappearance, the Board sent another family to take the place of those who’d left, just as they had with the Dawsons. The newcomers were a capable couple in their early thirties, with a daughter of Janie’s age and two sons of five and three, hard-working folk, who fitted in straight away. Everyone was pleased to see the two little girls at once become friends because though Janie now got on better with her step-family, she was the sort who couldn’t manage without a friend or two.

Gil complained to the Board on a monthly basis that they’d not yet built proper four-roomed houses for SG1, as they had for other groups. The reply, if officialdom bothered to send one, was always that the matter was ‘in progress’ and that each group must wait its turn.

There was much grumbling when they heard that a school was being set up for some of the other Northcliffe groups and that a woman had been appointed as teacher.

But most of all, life for the settlers was work, family, comradeship, followed by more hard work. And when that work was on land that they would one day own, they didn’t grumble. There was such a freedom to this life, a chance to be your own master.

As August moved into September, spring brightened the floor of the forest with dozens of different wild flowers, orchids so tiny you had to bend close to see how beautiful they were, so many of these flowers, unknown to the English settlers. Pete taught the groupies their names: donkey orchids, spider orchids. There was one even he didn’t know, pink and smelling like chocolate. Wild flowers of all colours sprang up like delicate frills along the edges of the tracks, and peeped shyly out from under bushes. Then there were kangaroo paws, with leaves like tall grass and long stalks with furry looking green and red flowers on the end that did look a bit like an animal’s paws.

Northcliffe was expanding rapidly, with more buildings going up, but the town site was a cause for much complaint by everyone. In the wet weather, it was covered in puddles and the stretches of slippery mud were a trap for the unwary that caused quite a few falls. The drains dug to keep the area from flooding were almost as much of a hazard. Even in the hot weather the ground there never completely dried out. You didn’t have to go down far to find dampness.

Whoever had chosen that site for the town wanted his head examining, in Gil’s opinion.

There were occasional bouts of upset stomachs in the group, and one of the smaller, weaker children died, after which Gil was even more watchful that everyone set up their lavatories properly. There was a regulation sanitary pan, with lid and ring, sold at the store, but some families tried to economise by using kerosene tins instead. Whatever receptacle they used had to be emptied regularly or he let forth his sergeant’s roar and tore a strip off them, then stood over them till they did the noisome deed.

He was always busy – but never too busy to think about Irene and wonder how she was. One day, after much thought, he risked writing to her, just a friendly letter asking how she was.

The following week he received a reply. There was nothing romantic about it, but she said how lovely it was to hear from him and asked after the Boyds and others. That meant he had an excuse for replying and best of all, it gave him a flicker of hope. He reread her letter every night as he sat by his lonely fire, even though he knew it by heart, tracing the lines of her signature with his forefinger.

It was agony to wait a further week to write again, but he did, composing the letter in his mind, going over it again and again, till he knew by heart what he wanted to say and felt fairly certain it wouldn’t upset her. He wrote it without a single change or hesitation on the day he’d settled on in his mind as ‘right’ and sent it to the post in Pemberton the next day.

They needed a post office in Northcliffe, needed a lot of things.

But they were managing, making progress, making farms together.

As September turned into October and edged towards November, the weather grew much warmer again, though the nights could still be chilly.

Norah’s new garden was full of plants, which she watched over carefully for fear of wild animals intruding: peas, beans, marrow, cauliflower, lettuce, cabbage and tomatoes which didn’t need greenhouses to grow here. After rabbits got in and ate some of the young plants, Andrew fenced it off with wire netting, digging the netting in at the bottom and putting rocks along it, so that no wild creatures could spoil the harvest.

They all welcomed the fresh greens, seemed to crave green food, somehow. Norah had ensured they had dried peas all through the winter, cooking them the Lancashire way till they were mushy and serving them sometimes in a cup with vinegar, a treat the children loved.

After perusing the catalogues she’d sent away for more seeds and cuttings of fruit bushes, asking advice on how to grow them from Gil, who laughed and confessed he’d never been a gardener. So the groupies all pooled their knowledge of the old world, asked other groups and learned together what would grow here in the new world and how best to encourage it.

On Norah’s birthday Andrew bought her a grape vine, which he had sent for from a catalogue. The sight of it reduced her to tears.

‘It’ll take years to fruit,’ he said apologetically. ‘If you don’t like it, I can—’

‘I do. I love it. I want apple trees too, once the house is built and we know where we stand.’

The vine was a source of great interest in the area, and when Gil said you could take cuttings from the wood which would have to be ruthlessly pruned at the beginning of the following winter, she rashly promised cuttings to all her neighbours.

Much of their shopping was done by catalogue, with the staple groceries bought in the Northcliffe store, huge bags of flour and sugar, tins of jam and corned beef. Sacks of apples in season. And sometimes farmers or smallholders came in from Manjimup or Pemberton selling their produce, heavy sacks of potatoes and onions, cabbages and cauliflowers.

‘It’s such a good life here,’ Norah said to a friend on one of their sing-song evenings. ‘I don’t think I’ve ever been as happy.’

‘Hard work, though,’ Pam said ruefully. ‘I nearly didn’t come tonight, I was exhausted. You never seem to flag.’