A Darker Music (6 page)

It was Tallis, of course, asking one of his rhetorical questions. ‘Can any of you explain how a mere sequence of tones, the aural sensations generated by changing vibrations in strings of different lengths, can evoke emotion so strongly?’

Of course there was no answer. Nobody had ever managed to explain that mystery, but until they’d got to know Tallis they’d kept trying to come up with something, however puerile. And reaping his scorn, until they’d learnt at last to accept the magic and embrace it.

Through the headphones the quality of this CD was so clear that you could get an inkling of what it was like to sit there among your fellow musicians, two violins on one side, cello on the other, each aware of the others but locked into a greater awareness of the notes they were playing, striving to reproduce a pattern of sounds created by a young genius in the eighteenth century. It wouldn’t be the same as he’d imagined it — modern instruments produced different sounds, and styles of playing changed with the whims of fashion — but that didn’t matter.

The Andante now. Tender and thoughtful, but always robust. Then the Minuet, declamatory, without losing the formality you expected from such a stately dance. In the middle of that was the Trio, up and down against the backing of plucked strings, almost like a country dance. Then the Allegro ma non troppo that ended the piece.

She waited for the viola’s starring part, its darker sound giving added authority to the theme already stated by the violins; and, at last, that change of key to D major that was almost shocking and brought the quartet to an end.

The CD made its little trill to let her know that the music was over. Clio touched her face and realised that her cheeks were wet. But these weren’t tears of sadness. They were the happy tears that came when one met a dear friend from the past, and discovered that the friendship was still alive and just as precious as it had always been.

6

W
HEN
M
ARY WENT OUTSIDE EARLY ON
S
ATURDAY
to fetch oranges for Clio’s morning drink, she found a lacy covering of ice on the golden fruit. With Clio still asleep and no breakfast to prepare for Martin and his father, she had time to savour the morning. The sounds and smells of sheep were permeating the still, cold air. As the sun cleared the horizon, little puffs of steam rose from each bush and tree, with bigger clouds of vapour curling above the rainwater tanks and the roofs of the buildings. Among the branches of the orchard trees tiny spider webs, jewelled with ice, hung like fairy tinsel, and silken threads of gossamer drifted through the warming air like mysterious visitors from another world.

The sun was still low, and the shadows lay in complicated stripes along the ground; the tops of the trees and roofs were gilded with light. With the sun warming her left cheek, Mary headed towards the ragged line of pine trees. The grass was vivid blue-green in the shadows, golden-green in the bands of light, and heavy with melting ice. Her cheeks stung with cold, and around her face the plume of her breath streamed like a ragged cloud, but she walked briskly and was soon sweating inside her jacket.

With the first wash of the southerly wind in her face, Mary shivered. Through the pine trees the grey line of clouds lying along the horizon was already creeping over the sky, bringing with it the drizzle that would keep her inside for the rest of the day.

Clio was eating two meals a day now, both of them tiny, and today would be a good time to do some forward planning. Next week she’d get an order of groceries from the Co-op. She could ask about the routine at afternoon tea tomorrow. But first she’d finish the audit of the freezers. If there were any beef or poultry bones in there, she could make some good hearty soup stock.

Going through the freezers took most of the day, with a long break for a meal, and shorter ones while she thawed out her aching fingers. When Mary took her tea in, Clio was sitting up in bed propped on her pillows with headphones on, listening to music, and seemed perfectly contented, accepting the tray Mary offered with no more than a faint smile. If Clio wasn’t ready for another chat, that was fine.

Mary settled to eat her own meal in the kitchen, the soft crackle of the fire as a counterpoint to the relentless dripping of rain from the roof into the underground tank outside the bay window. When she finished eating, she went back to Ellen’s room to look for the diaries Clio had mentioned. They’d be something to read.

She found them stacked on the bottom shelf of the bookcase built in beside the fireplace: a series of ordinary exercise books, most of them with black imitation-leather covers. They were in no particular order, and Mary took the first to come to hand. The rest of the bookshelves offered little to interest her: a set of Dickens, Walter Scott, an old
Encyclopaedia Britannica
; all of them dusty.

Ellen’s handwriting was clear, and each page was headed with the date. By chance, the volume Mary had picked up told of the voyage to Australia. There was a list of the goods Ellen and Edgar had brought with them: animals, farm machinery, seeds and plants, and their furniture and personal effects. And they’d brought Ben, too; an orphan boy of fourteen, as labourer and shepherd. Was that the same Ben that Angus had mentioned?

Apparently the Hazlitts weren’t pioneers: the first settlers had taken up land in this area in the 1850s, and cleared and fenced it. Edgar had been in correspondence with agents in Western Australia before leaving England and had known what kind of place he wanted. The Hazlitts had bought land that was already a farm, if a relatively undeveloped one by today’s standards.

S
UNDAY WAS ANOTHER DAY
of freezing wind and showers. While she waited for the washing to dry in front of the stove, Mary made cakes and biscuits for the coming week. She’d done as much cleaning as she needed to for the moment, and as the kitchen was the only room that was warm she wasn’t tempted to leave it.

For lunch she baked potatoes, hollowed them out and dusted the cavities with chopped chives before breaking in some of the fresh eggs Gayleen had brought over. She seasoned these with paprika and grated parmesan, then baked them until the eggs were just set. After the meal, she had a shower and washed her hair. If the bathroom was still a cold and cheerless place, at least there were no mats of curly dark hair clogging the drains, and the smell of urine had just about gone.

At midafternoon, Gayleen came to fetch her. Her hair was tousled by the wind, her cheeks rosy with the cold. Mary went to remind Clio she was going out, but Clio was asleep.

Bundled into her parka, Mary trudged behind Gayleen through the blowing rain, rounding the peppercorn trees that thrashed in the wind. Angus wouldn’t be sitting out here today. The dogs whined briefly as they passed, but Gayleen ignored them. A pair of black cats scuttled away.

The fibro walls of the house were streaked with rain. Pulling the outer door shut with a scrape and a bang, Gayleen led the way into a kitchen bright with fluorescent light and filled with people Mary had never seen before. They were all looking at her, faces alight with curiosity. For a moment, her heart sank.

Gayleen broke the silence. ‘This is my mum,’ she said.

Gayleen’s mother had the same ash-blonde hair, but straight and shoulder-length, and the same rosebud mouth. But where Gayleen’s eyes were dark, her mother’s were greenish, her brows and lashes without colour.

‘Gloria.’ The woman held out a warm hand. Her cheeks were flushed. She was wearing a green velour tracksuit and short ugg boots, with an apron tied around her middle. She was heavier than her daughter, but that was probably just a matter of age and motherhood. ‘And this is Janet Melrose,’ she said.

Janet was older, short and thickset, with greying gingery hair cut short and permed. She was wearing glasses, and her face was heavily powdered, possibly in an attempt to cover the freckles that were sprinkled like sesame seeds all over her face; and probably the rest of her, too, Mary guessed, glancing at her hands. Janet nodded at Mary with a polite little smile.

‘Janet,’ Mary acknowledged, fixing the name to the face in her mind.

‘And my hubby, Cecil,’ Janet said.

Cecil nodded at Mary without a smile, though he seemed friendly enough.

‘And my dad,’ Gayleen said.

The man supervising a rack of muffins cooling next to the sink was slim and neat, with small dark eyes like the currants in a gingerbread man’s face. He gave her a grin. Two little boys were hanging about in the doorway leading into the rest of the house, hopefully inhaling the scent of baking. Mary smiled at them, too, but they ducked their heads and avoided her eye.

‘That’s Glen and Gary,’ Gayleen said. ‘They’re pretty well over the measles now. Gavin’s still crook, though.’ Over their pyjamas, the boys were wearing hand-knitted sweaters, felted from repeated washing; on their feet were scuffed sheepskin slippers.

‘You’ve had measles, I hope, Mary?’ Gloria said.

‘Yes, when I was ten. And all the other things, too, except mumps.’

‘Good. Now sit yourself down, won’t you.’

‘Thanks.’ Mary pulled out a vacant chair.

While Gloria poured the tea, it fell to Janet to fill the conversational hiatus. ‘We haven’t seen you around these parts before, have we, Mary?’

‘No. I live in Perth. I flew down with Martin.’

Janet nodded. They all knew this. ‘Paul — Mr Hazlitt — didn’t mention anything about getting someone in.’

Mary couldn’t help admiring the delicacy of the enquiry. ‘He employed me through the agency I use in Perth.’

Janet considered her next question. Gloria finished dispensing tea, then put half-a-dozen of the muffins on a plate and handed it to the boys in the doorway. ‘One for Gavin, too, don’t forget.’ They disappeared into the hallway. Gloria went to the fridge and took out a cream-filled sponge cake and set it on the table in front of her visitors.

Janet went on with her inquisition. ‘And is this the kind of work you usually do, Mary?’

‘Yes. I work as a temporary housekeeper.’

‘Oh?’ Janet peered at her over the tops of her glasses. ‘Have you been doing that for long?’

Gloria handed her a knife. ‘Do the honours, will you, Janet.’

With careful precision, Janet sectioned the cake and distributed the slices. There were cake forks and paper serviettes; the crockery was bone china that Gloria probably kept for best.

Mary accepted her cake with thanks, then answered Janet’s question. ‘No, I’ve only been doing this work for a year or so. It’s satisfying, helping people out when they need it. And I like experiencing how other people live.’

There was a pause while they sampled the cake.

‘Old Angus said you wanted to know about the sheep stud bizzo,’ Garth said. ‘You better talk to Cec here.’

Cec had a long face, his oiled crimped hair receding from a widow’s peak. He seemed embarrassed to be the focus of attention.

‘Yes, I’d be really interested to hear about it,’ Mary said. ‘You breed Merinos, don’t you?’

‘We breed for ultrafine Merino wool,’ he said.

Mary was no wiser. ‘What does that mean, Cec?’

Cec moved his haunches in his chair, staring into his cup as if searching for inspiration. He cleared his throat before replying. ‘The easy answer is that it’s the micron measurement,’ he said, glancing up to make sure she was listening then keeping his gaze fixed somewhere near her left ear. ‘That’s the actual thickness of each fibre. The average human hair’s around sixty microns. Your usual Merino wool goes around nineteen to twenty-five microns, depending. Anything over thirty feels itchy, to give you an idea. When you wear it, made into a sweater or something. You can see what they mean when they talk about wearing hair shirts as a punishment.’ He looked directly at her, his expression serious. ‘Here at Downe, we aim for nothing over thirteen-point-five microns.’ He waited for the applause, and Mary beamed at him, hoping this would do. ‘The market for ultrafine is mainly the Italians, those suits Paul Keating used to wear. And the Japs. They pay a premium for it.’ He paused again for dramatic effect. ‘A bale of thirteen micron can fetch over a million dollars.’

Mary stared at him in wonder. That was serious money. ‘For one bale?’

‘It did, a few years ago.’ Cec seemed to swell with pride. ‘We’ve got one better than that. It’s just been through all the tests. We don’t know how much it’ll fetch, but it’ll be a bomb. They call tenders with wool like this; it doesn’t go in the regular auctions, so it’s a lengthy business.’

‘Tell her the rest,’ Garth interrupted.

‘That’s wool from our best wethers. We keep them shedded, feed them specially. It’s not enough the wool being fine, it’s got to be bright and strong and clean to get those fancy prices. The rest of the flock isn’t that good, nor the Southdown crosses.’

‘So there are different flocks?’ Mary was surprised at this but remembered the sheep she’d seen when she’d arrived, with their brown faces and legs; they must have been the Southdowns.

‘That’s right. Different grades, different quality. There’s the ewes, they’re graded, too. The culls are mated with Southdowns for fat lambs. The best ram lambs are left entire and either sold off or we keep the best, as long as they conform to the Downe type. We sell ewes, too. We’ll be taking a truckload up to Perth for the Show, end of September.’

Cec stirred sugar into his tea and lifted the cup for a long sip. Janet seemed to take this as a signal that he’d finished talking about sheep, and went on with her own investigations.

‘And tell me, Mary, do you have a family?’

‘I’ve got a younger brother. My parents live in Queensland.’

‘Yes? And what about …’ Janet left the question dangling.

Mary let the pause grow. ‘Oh, do you mean am I married? Well, I was.’ She watched the look of concern cross Janet’s features as she anticipated the dreaded word
divorce
. ‘But my husband …’ She was taking an unseemly delight in teasing Janet, and lowered her voice to a level that implied the direst tragedy. ‘My husband, Roy, was killed.’

Janet gasped and drew back as if to isolate herself from such barbarity. Everyone else was silent, waiting to hear the story: this was better than television. ‘Oh, my dear! What …’