The Rust Red Land

By Robyn Bishop

' You ask too many questions, Matilda. It' s not becoming in a girl.' But Matilda is full of questions. It' s the late 1800s in rural New South Wales and Matilda, as the oldest daughter, is expected to cook, clean and help Mama with her brothers and sisters. But her inquiring mind will not be stilled nor her rebellious spirit tamed. When frustration overcomes her, she finds escape in the land she loves and in her imagination, nourished by books.In the rust red landscape, both striking and harsh, and against the backdrop of World Wars and a changing Australia, Matilda is torn by her desire for freedom and allegiance to her growing family. With their never-ending demands, and crises of poverty, drought and illness, what Matilda really wants seems further from her reach. Will she ever see the sea? Have a vocation and earn her own money? Have the time to read?This sweeping novel brings to life the injustices faced by women in the 1800s and 1900s. Punctuated with betrayal and loyalty, hope and despair, love and loss, Matilda and her family come alive showing how the grip of patriarchy tried to strangle the ambitions of women, but there were women who refused to give up.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Independent Publishers Group
• Release date: Oct 3, 2023
• ISBN: 9781925950861

Book preview

1

JULY 1892

Matilda huddles against the rough wall of the slab hut, digs her small bare toes into the unforgiving dirt floor and stares at the tightly wrapped bundle on the kitchen table, willing it to wiggle and cry. It remains still and silent in the watery morning light. Mama sits limply on a stool, her back to the hollow hearth where last night’s fire has diminished to ash. Her thick brown plait hangs down the back of her nightdress, stray hair escaping at whim.

Mama is usually dressed and busy when Matilda staggers, sleepy-eyed and warm from her bed, into the kitchen. The fire dances in the hearth and the old iron kettle sings on the hob. Oatmeal bubbles, sticky and sweet in the pot, ready to spoon into tin plates for small mouths to blow on and swallow down into night-empty bellies. Mama cuddles her and her toddler sister Clara before they crawl onto their stools to break their fast. This morning, Mama is withdrawn, her face is thin and tired and she looks like a stranger. No sudden smile plays on her lips and the flesh around her eyes is puffed like the frogs that Matilda and Clara chase down by the creek.

The only sound Matilda hears is the clock—Mama’s prized possession—ticking the lonely minutes away in her parents’ bedroom. A draught blows ghostly puffs of ash from the grate and fragile fragments settle on Mama’s slender toes. Clara, too young yet to catch the sorrow, is still asleep in her cot. She didn’t hear Mama’s terrifying cries or Father’s desperate groans in the middle of the night.

Mama trails her fingers across the tiny bundle on the table and keens, long and low, from the back of her throat. Matilda watches a tear slide down her cheek and creeps across the floor. Tears belong to her, Clara and the baby, not to Mama. She reaches out and catches the little pearl as it hangs on the ridge of Mama’s chin. It’s wet and warm on her finger.

‘Oh, Tilly, my big darling girl, come here,’ Mama whispers and draws Matilda into her arms.

Leaning into Mama’s comfort, Matilda inhales her familiar smell of soap and stew.

Mama sighs. ‘You must be brave Tilly. The angels have come to take your little sister with them.’

‘To heaven?’

Mama buries her face in Matilda’s sleep tousled hair and doesn’t answer. Usually, Mama is angry with messy hair. Today, there are no harsh words. Matilda turns to gaze at the bundle on the table. In there is her baby sister, Lily.

Matilda’s tasks are to feed Lily porridge and gravy, sponge her at bath time after Mama pours the heated water in the big enamel dish, and ferry her around the yard while Mama hangs out the washing. No more. Heaven means gone, no more, ever.

The twin lambs, born with weak bleats, went to heaven. The squealing kittens that Father stuffed in an old hessian sack and threw into the creek went to heaven. Bluey, the heeler cross, whose excited barks filled the yard, choked on a bone and went to heaven too. Matilda searched for them in the windswept paddocks and in the river weed but couldn’t find them, no matter how hard she looked.

Mama removes the sheeting from Lily’s face and Matilda gasps. Lily doesn’t look like Lily. She looks like the porcelain doll in Mama’s cupboard, chalky and brittle, not to be touched in case it breaks. Matilda strokes Lily’s cheek and snatches her hand away. Her voice shakes. ‘Mama, is it cold in heaven?’

An icy wind sweeps over them as Father flings open the kitchen door and enters carrying a strangely shaped pine box. ‘The child doesn’t need to see the baby like this, Mary.’

‘She lives on a farm, she needs to know death,’ Mama mumbles.

Father glowers, his thick eyebrows meeting in the middle. ‘Go get dressed lass, and see you dress your sister too.’

Matilda scampers from the room. Never question Father. She peers between the bars of the cot where Clara is asleep, breathing through her petal mouth. Curious about the box Father has made, she sneaks back to the kitchen and peeks around the door, trying not to make a sound.

Father’s work-weathered hands tremble as he places Lily in the box. ‘There, my little one, I was afraid you wouldn’t fit. But you do.’ His eyes well with tears as he kisses the baby’s cheek and passes her back to Mama.

Father is crying too. Waiting for the tears to slide down his face, Matilda scrunches the folds of her nightdress into a ball.

He brushes them away with the back of his hand. ‘It’s no good sitting there staring Mary, it’s not going to bring her back. You best go place her on the big bed and get on with the day.’

Mama’s milk bleeds through the bodice of her nightdress as she obeys Father and carries Lily across the kitchen. Matilda’s chest aches, for Mama, for Lily and for the gap inside herself where Lily should be.

Father clears his throat and spits out the door. A knob of phlegm lands on the verandah boards. ‘I’ll go and oil the coffin so it’s not as rough.’ He stares at something outside that Matilda can’t see. ‘Then, I’ll go and fetch the old doc to write up the little one’s death.’

Matilda rolls the coffin word around her mouth. Lily is in a coffin. Lily is dead. Lily is going to heaven in a coffin. She likes the coffin’s fresh smell, but she doesn’t like Lily in it, and she hates heaven for taking her away. Where are the angels? Mama said there were angels. Perhaps they are waiting outside. Will they fit in the coffin with Lily? She needs to find them. Lily won’t like going to heaven by herself. She’s sure of that. She rushes to the door, wings fluttering in her head.

Father blocks her. ‘Matilda do you want the strap?’

The sound of the wings dissolve and the rapid beat of her heart takes over.

‘No thank you Father.’

‘Then do as I say.’

She swallows what she wants to say, hangs her head and waits for Father’s order.

‘Get your sister up and dressed and help your mother. She needs plenty of help today.’

‘Yes Father,’ she says clearly. Father hates mumbling.

Clara is awake. She smiles and gurgles and wraps her arms around Matilda as she’s lifted out of the cot. Matilda kisses her face and neck, changes her whiffy wet nappy, brushes her dark curls and dresses her in a day pinafore before scrambling into her own clothes and dragging her scraggy brown hair into a pigtail.

Back in the kitchen, the ashes are cleared from the fireplace and the fire is lit. Mama, clad in her work dress and patched pinny with her hair coiled on the top of her head, stirs the big black pot filled with the morning’s porridge. The day is following the pattern of all the days that’ve gone before in Matilda’s short life, except there is no Lily gurgling in her pram by the fire. She helps Clara onto her stool, fetches the bowls and says grace as Mama scoops out the thick hot sweetness. She promises herself that once her morning chores are done, she’ll take Clara by her chubby little hand, and go outside to find the angels that will look after Lily on her journey to heaven.

2

SEPTEMBER 1892

It is peaceful in the back yard. Magpies warble and a slight wind teases the leaves on the surrounding gum trees as Matilda collects bark and sticks to help kindle the fire while Father chops wood. When her basket is full she puts it down near the vegie patch, where the tomato seedlings are beginning to flourish and watches Father toil. She is fascinated by the bristly black hairs covering his bare arms as he plunges the axe into the wood.

Rolling up her sleeves, she examines her own arms. They’re puny and white, nothing like Father’s, and are dusted with fine fuzz. She wants to ask Father why some people have black hair, some have blonde and why hers is mousey brown, but it’s hard to find the right time to ask him things. He’s always busy or in a bad mood, especially since Lily has gone to heaven and Mama has gotten sick. He frowns constantly, and his lips are tight. There’s one question she’s been dying to ask him for weeks. It’s now or never. She waits for him to finish cutting a massive log into quarters before she risks saying, ‘Father.’

‘What?’ he grunts, the axe dangling from his hand.

‘If I climbed a tree could I see the sea?’

‘What?’ he guffaws. ‘Why on earth do you ask such strange questions, Matilda?’

She wants to say it isn’t a strange question. It’s something she needs to know. Instead, she looks at her feet, trying to stop the red blush spreading on her face. The blush is hot and prickly and happens mainly when Father’s around. She notices that her shoes are dirty. I’ll have to polish them later or Father will be cross.

Father loads the cut wood into the wheelbarrow. ‘There aren’t any trees tall enough.’

She looks up, ignoring her red cheeks and asks, ‘Why Father?’

‘Because we live inland. We’re nowhere near the sea.’

‘Why?’

‘Because I’m a farmer.’

‘Can’t you have a farm by the sea?’

‘Not this type of farm.’ He clears his throat and spits on the ground.

The shiny shivering glob begs to be poked with a stick and made into a pattern.

He tests the edge of the axe. ‘Is that all lass? I need to get on with the job.’

‘If I wanted to visit the sea, how would I get there?’

He positions another log on the chopping block. ‘You ask too many questions, Matilda. It’s not becoming in a girl.’

She wants to ask why it isn’t becoming in a girl but forces the question back into her mouth. It’s one question too many and she needs to know about the sea. ‘Please Father, please tell me how?’

‘If I tell you will you leave me in peace?’

She nods. Her cheeks stop burning.

‘You know there are creeks.’

Of course. She tilts her head to show she’s listening.

‘Well, creeks lead to rivers and rivers flow into the sea.’

‘You follow a river?’

‘Yes,’ he chuckles, ‘at least that’s how they did it in the olden days.’

She stores the information to think about later and says, ‘Thank you Father.’

‘Now, take the kindling inside and check on your Mama.’

‘Yes, Father.’

Inside, she slips past Mama and Clara, who are sitting in front of the fire, and hurries into the big bedroom to look at Mama’s books. Her heart skips a beat as she opens her favourite one that’s filled with drawings of the sea and the sand and ships and shells and too many different species of fish to count. Afraid that Father might come in and catch her, she flips quickly through the pages. Father doesn’t like to see her with her head stuck inside a book. He thinks it’s a waste of time. She listens for the continuing thwack of the axe outside, then opens Mama’s book of paintings from the old country. Mama carried it in her small canvas bag on the colossal ship that brought her to Australia, years and years ago, and when she’s homesick or afraid she looks at the paintings and feels better.

Sometimes, when Father is working and Clara is napping, Matilda and Mama sit on the big bed together and pore over portraits of ladies in lace, cities populated with people and steeples, and misty landscapes thick with trees and snow-covered fields. Mama tells her stories about snow fights and snowmen and tobogganing and the way snowflakes fall on your eyelashes and dissolve like tears. When Mama talks about the snow she isn’t sad at all.

Matilda turns the pages until she finds her favourite still-life of ruby-red flowers in a crystal vase. Set against an open window framed by creamy curtains, they look soft and dewy and she longs to touch them.

‘They’re roses,’ Mama said. ‘And they smell so sweet, big darling girl. One day I hope to plant some.’

Matilda searched for roses in the paddocks and by the creek but couldn’t find them. Not to be discouraged, she picked little pink daises and bottlebrush and put them in an old jam jar under the kitchen window. If she squinted hard enough they looked like roses.

The rest of Mama’s books only have words. Some of the words are big and bold and others are small and squiggly. Matilda knows there’s information in the words, answers to the questions in her head and she wishes she could read. Then, she wouldn’t have to ask Father so many things, her face wouldn’t go red and he wouldn’t get cranky.

Hearing him scrape his boots on the iron rung outside the kitchen door, she closes the books and scurries out of the bedroom into the kitchen before he can notice she’s missing.

JUNE 1893

Matilda stands beside the big bed, not knowing what to do. Mama won’t get up, all she wants to do is sleep. The curtains are closed, even though it’s daytime and the room is dark and scary. The rain pours onto the tin roof, drowning out Mama’s breathing. Matilda crawls onto the bed, over the twist and turn of blankets, and lies next to her. She doesn’t care that Mama smells like wet wool and dirty hair. All she cares about is Mama waking up, getting up and looking after her and Clara again. She runs her fingers over Mama’s cracked lips and feels the air going in and coming out. Relieved, she straightens the blankets as best she can and notices a leak in the corner of the room. Mama won’t like that.

She runs out into the yard to fetch a bucket. The rain plasters her hair to her head and drips from the tip of her nose into her mouth. Snow, the farm dog, slinks around her legs, whining.

‘Poor Snow,’ she says, letting him inside even though it’s against Father’s rules. ‘Shush now, you have to be quiet. Clara’s asleep and Mama’s sick.’

Snow shakes the water from his coat, pads to the fireplace and settles with his nose on his paws while Matilda heaves the bucket into the bedroom. She hears Mama groan in her sleep and wishes Father were here but he’s gone to fetch the doctor to make Mama better.

Back in the kitchen, she attempts to dry her hair with an old tea-towel, hoists a log onto the dying fire and stabs it with a poker the way Father does. Her arms ache and she wishes she was bigger and stronger. Kneeling beside Snow, she watches the sap ooze from the gum, catch alight and spit blue and orange flames. Her imagination spirals up the chimney with the smoke, past the dark bricks and soot and through the rain to where the sky is clear and blue, and the air is warm. She skips barefoot through the grass, picks yellow daisies with juicy stems and makes a crown. A squad of swallows flutter overhead, their feathers shimmering in the sunlight. Matilda flaps her arms and flies with them. The wind is all around her as she glides over the lush green hills to the sea that rolls and laps and spreads forever before merging with the sky. She dives down to where the white-tipped waves spray her face and laughs with delight until she realises Snow is licking her with his wet rubbery tongue and she is back by the fireplace.

Laying her head on his back, she whispers, ‘When I’m bigger Snow, will you come with me to see the sea?’

By way of answer, Snow wags his tail before suddenly stiffening as something moves behind them in the shadows of the room. Matilda jerks around to see Clara, who has just woken from her nap. She jumps up and hugs her little sister. Clara’s bottom lip trembles as she points to the ceiling.

‘It’s only rain, Clara. Big rain. Nothing to be afraid of,’ Matilda says, wondering if the rain will ever stop and if Father will come home soon with the doctor. He said he would be back before the sun faded beyond the far paddock. But there’s no sun, only rain and darkness. Perhaps the creek is swollen, and he can’t get through? She hopes not. She doesn’t know how to help Mama. She isn’t big enough. Father says the doctor will know what to do and not to worry. But she does, she worries about Mama all the time.

A flash of lightning suddenly illuminates the kitchen and Clara screams. Snow yelps and crawls under the table.

‘It won’t hurt you,’ soothes Matilda. She’s seen all sorts of lightning and knows that it can only strike you if you’re standing in the open. She covers Clara’s ears against the thunder that comes next, walloping the roof and banging around the hut, and then encourages her little sister to count the seconds between the flashes and the roar until the storm recedes. Clara calms down and giggles and Snow pokes his nose out from under the table.

Mama emerges from the big bedroom. The thunder must have woken her. Her hair is wild around her pale face and her nightdress is crumpled. She looks like a ghost or a fallen angel or both, except she doesn’t have wings. Matilda leads her to the fireplace where she collapses onto a chair and wraps her arms around herself. ‘Lily,’ she whispers, gazing into the flames.

Matilda drapes a shawl over her shoulders and says, ‘We’re here Mama.’

‘Lily,’ says Mama.

‘Don’t you remember us Mama?’

‘Matilda,’ whispers Mama.

‘Yes Mama,’ says Matilda. Her heart jolts.

‘My big darling girl.’

‘Yes and Clara.’

Clara leans her head on Mama’s knee.

‘Clara, my rosebud,’ Mama says, caressing Clara’s hair.

The shadows retreat. The rain quietens to a patter and sunlight slips through the window. Matilda places the kettle on the hob, brews some tea and stirs two teaspoons of sugar into Mama’s special cup. Mama says that sugar in your tea gives you strength when you’re sick. Mama sips the tea and little roses appear on her pale cheeks.

Snow scratches at the door. Matilda lets him out and spies two riders galloping across the paddock towards the hut. ‘Father,’ she whispers, a big lump in her throat. ‘Father’s home.’

She watches as the horses slow to a trot, snort and toss their wet glistening manes, and Father reins them in. Their legs and flanks are streaked with thick mud, the colour of cocoa. Clara hides behind Matilda while Father and the doctor dismount and scrape their boots on the iron rung. She is cuddly-warm and Matilda welcomes the solid feel of her against her legs.

Father stares at Matilda with his stern this-is-important-be-quiet face and she nudges Clara out of the way, allowing the doctor to stride into the kitchen and fill it with his self-important bulk. Clara points at the steam rising from the men’s saturated great coats as Father hangs them on the pegs by the door.

‘Hot, Tilly, hot,’ she mutters.

‘Shush,’ Matilda warns.

Mama peers at the men and her eyes soften as she whispers, ‘Robert.’

‘You know me?’ says Father.

‘Of course,’ says Mama and laughs, a small gentle laugh.

Matilda’s chest feels warm and she squeezes Clara’s hand.

‘Mary, you’ve come out of it.’ Father massages Mama’s shoulders and turns to the doctor. ‘She’s come out of it.’

‘So, I see,’ says the doctor, his pink lips barely visible through his massive grey beard.

Matilda wonders how he gets food in there.

‘Remember Doc Larkin, Mary? He’s here to help,’ says Father.

‘Mrs Crawford, may I?’ enquires Doc Larkin placing his bulbous, brown medicine bag on the table where it shrinks the white tablecloth.

Matilda wonders if the bag contains medicine to make Mama better. The only medicine she takes is cod liver oil. Mama gives her a spoonful when she has a tummy ache. It’s thick and nasty and hard to swallow.

‘Excuse me Doc Larkin, what’s in your bag?’ The question slides from her tongue, out into the room, before she can stop it.

The doctor glares at her through thick tortoise-shell spectacles and huffs.

She feels smaller than an ant. Her face turns red.

‘Off to the bedroom and take Clara with you,’ Father orders.

Matilda does as she’s bid but loiters near the bedroom door, hankering to hear what Doc Larkin says.

‘This recovery is excellent Robert. I was afraid I may have had to prescribe incarceration and regular ice baths. It’s a treatment that has limited success and is often distasteful to the patient. Now, Mary has a nervous disposition. She simply needs more rest and perhaps another baby.’

Matilda shivers. Ice forms on puddles. How can it fill a bath? And won’t Mama’s teeth chatter and her fingertips turn blue like they do on a frosty day?

‘Up, Tilly, up,’ Clara demands, clambering onto the bed she shares with Matilda.

And where will Mama find another baby?

‘Now Tilly, now,’ Clara persists.

Matilda stores the questions to think about later and snuggles under the blanket with her sister. She picks up two peg dolls wearing rag dresses, made from the leftover fabric of Mama’s pinafore, and gives one to Clara. She doesn’t mind that the dolls have no noses because Father has burnt eyes into the wood and Mama has smeared cheap red rouge on their cheeks. She settles into a game of keeping house with Clara where no one is sick, all the babies live, the crops never fail and there is always hot lamb stew in the pot on the hearth.

3

FEBRURARY 1894

‘Only the first day lass and then you must walk,’ Father says, loading Matilda into the dray and starting for school.

She smooths down her skirt, bites her lip and tries to stop her nerves jumping by untying her new lunch sack, examining the jam sandwiches, picking the sultanas out of the fruitcake and eating them, one by one. Then, feeling guilty because Mama said not to eat anything until lunch time, she glances at Father to make sure he hasn’t seen and bends over to study her new school shoes. She polished them last night with thick nugget and an old rag and Mama praised her for doing a good job.

‘For heaven’s sake, Matilda, stop fidgeting,’ orders Father.

‘Yes Father,’ she replies, sitting still and deciding to make Father happy by not moving until they reach the school, even if she gets pins and needles in her legs.

She gazes at the dry yellowed land as they trot along the dirt road. They’re in the middle of a drought that Father says might never end. The dam is nearly empty and the sheep are skin and bones. Even the trees are thirsty. The leaves are brittle and droop towards the ground and the birds are nowhere to be seen. The dust, rising behind the dray, doesn’t settle but loiters in the air as if it’s waiting for the rain to come and dampen it down.

Matilda’s stomach somersaults as they approach the schoolhouse which stands in the centre of a dirt yard, surrounded by a wooden fence, separating it from a couple of houses and the general store where the Mahoney’s dole out flour and sugar from big brown sacks. The children, lined up on the verandah, are mostly boys. She has never had anything to do with boys. They fascinate her. Why they are different to girls? The tall skinny teacher, who reminds her of the sailor in her favourite book about the sea, counts the children as they go inside. She hopes he won’t give her the strap. She’s never had the strap, even though Father has threatened her with it. She thinks about all the books in the schoolroom. Mama said there would be lots. She hopes they have both pictures and words. Pictures take you to faraway places, but words wrap themselves around you. Mama has been teaching her how to read: small words, middle-sized words and some big ones. She would read all day if she could.

They pull into the schoolyard and she follows Father across the dirt, up the steps and into the schoolroom where the noise of the children is like a swarm of bees. Father introduces himself to the teacher and says, ‘Asks a lot of questions this one. Hope she’s not a nuisance.’

Matilda’s face burns and she hangs her head, wanting to disappear.

‘Well, she’s come to the right place.’

She hears the smile in the teacher’s voice and looks up. His eyes twinkle behind his glasses, his face is kind and he smells the way she imagines roses do, like nutmeg and honey.

‘Welcome to the world of learning, Matilda. I hope you’ll be very content here.’ He places his hand on her shoulder and ushers her to the little pine desk in front of his large, polished oak one.

From that day on, she absorbs Sir’s knowledge like blotting paper. She copies her numbers, holding her pencil correctly between her right thumb and forefinger. She learns the alphabet song, finishes her sums ahead of the other students and speeds through the early readers, repeatedly raising her hand to ask, ‘Please Sir, may I have another book?’

One morning, Sir asks her to stay in at recess. ‘Matilda, you’re exceptionally bright for your age, I’d like you to do some extra reading at home. Would you like that?’

‘Yes, please Sir,’ she says in a rush. ‘Only, I don’t have any books, except for some of Mama’s that she keeps in a pile on her dresser and I’ve read them over and over again. Well, not read them because some of the words are too hard and Mama doesn’t often have time to …’

He holds up his hand, silencing her, and passes her a red hardbound book embossed with thin gold borders. It’s heavy and inviting in her hands. Her heart thumps.

‘Read the title,’ Sir says with a smile that stretches like elastic over his face.

She swallows