Summer at Mount Hope by Rosalie Ham Page B

teeth, I’m worried my mother will marry Mr Titterton. Yesterday they read poetry together.’
    â€˜Company for each other,’ said Phoeba. ‘We all need friends.’ She glanced behind her but the bush was still and quiet.
    â€˜I saw them kissing.’
    Phoeba laughed. ‘I find that difficult to picture.’
    â€˜She acts like she’s in love.’ Henrietta inspected the twig, holding it just at the end of her nose.
    â€˜Then love must be blind, that’s all I can say.’
    Henrietta rubbed the twig up and down on a rock beside her, as if she was sharpening it. ‘What will happen to us if she marries old Tit?’
    â€˜You’ll have extra shirts to wash—’
    â€˜I’m serious. What will happen to me and Hadley?’
    â€˜You could always get married.’
    â€˜No one will marry me. I’ve got a face like a puffed apple at a dance and anyway, Mother won’t let me. She’d have to do her own washing and who would tie her corset? I’d worked out that she’d be dead by the time I was thirty and then I can just live on at the farm with Hadley.’
    â€˜What if Hadley got married, Henri, then what would you do?’
    â€˜I’d still stay there. It’s my home too.’
    Phoeba took Henrietta’s hand, stopped her rubbing the stick up and down and made her friend look at her. ‘Hadley wants to marry me.’
    â€˜Hadley’s always wanted to marry you.’
    â€˜I don’t think I can marry him though.’
    Henrietta looked at her, astounded. ‘He didn’t ask you, did he? Gee whiz, Phoeba. That’s perfect! We can all live at Elm Grove together. Mother and old Tit can retire to Geelong.’ Then Henrietta’s hopes faded, like the thread of black smoke from a candle flame. Phoeba was not happy. She let go of Phoeba’s hand. So that’s why Hadley had been working so hard these past days. Henrietta inspected the calluses on her palm.
    â€˜You don’t want to marry Hadley—’
    â€˜It’s not Hadley, Henri, it’s … I just don’t think I want to get married. It’s dangerous.’ They were both thinking of Agnes Overton, young and privileged, writhing to death in a rich man’s snowy sheets sodden with her own blood and sweat.
    â€˜Babies don’t kill all mothers,’ said Henrietta. ‘Mrs Jessop had seven.’
    â€˜And no teeth left.’ Phoeba pictured herself standing by Hadley with her lips folded in to hide the gaps where her teeth had been. Even more unsavoury was the though of procreation with Hadley, with anyone without love. He had given her measles once, that was intimate enough.
    â€˜Bathsheba, in the novel I’m reading, has taken over her uncle’s farm,’ said Phoeba. ‘Lots of women work. It’s not necessary to marry. Please don’t let it come between us, Henri. You’re my best friend … I’m sorry.’
    But Henrietta looked away. Mr Titterton kissing her mother, and now this. It was all ruined, and they’d been so happy before.
    â€˜My mother married for security,’ said Phoeba, ‘and it’s made her and Dad miserable. I think we’re meant to live a happy life.’
    â€˜You would have made Hadley and me very happy,’ murmured Henrietta.
    The conversation was only making things worse. ‘Anyway, I said I’d think about it.’
    â€˜Do whatever makes you happy,’ said Henrietta.
    But Phoeba was happy as she was: it was other people who urged her to change, to marry, to do the right thing.
    Henrietta pointed off towards Geelong. ‘Look.’
    And there, for the first time, a very, very faint glow, like a bonfire that was thirty miles away, seeped into the sky to the south.
    Friday, January 5, 1894
    E arly morning brought the thresher team to the district. As she milked the goat, Phoeba watched it move along the lane,