Read Online Summer at Mount Hope by Rosalie Ham - Free Book Online Page B

course, ruined half the vines,’ Robert began, as he led the visitor away. ‘The year before there was an early frost and of course, the birds …’
    Phoeba congratulated herself on how well everything was going and the three women hurried back to the kitchen.
    The dining room, on the north side of the house, was hot and overflowing. Maude had brought everything – including her mother’s sideboard and lounge suite, velvet drapes and matching ottomans – from their large home in Geelong and squeezed it into Mount Hope. On top of which the dining room was usually Robert’s study, with his viticulture books and magazines, his correspondence, his dead and smelly tobacco pipes, used matches and dried twigs and leaves. All this Maude had stuffed under Phoeba’s bed before she set the table with her mother’s best service – pink gilt-edged Oxford including cheese and salad plates, a sauce tureen and gravy boat, a butter dish and a set of vegetable dishes with button roses on the lids for handles. The cutlery was silver and Maude laid it out to its full glory including butter knives, condiment sets and pickle forks.
    When Robert’s tour was over, Phoeba peeped through to the dining room to study the guest, sitting at the cluttered table and surrounded by Aunt Margaret’s lush landscapes. There was no doubt Marius was a squatter: he dabbed his forehead with a serviette, talked to her father with an important air and quoted information he’d read about the internal combustion engine. ‘It signals the certain demise of the steam engine,’ he declared.
    Where had he buried the fact that he hadn’t been able to save his wife and unborn baby, Phoeba wondered. All she could see was a touch of the cavalier about him, but she pictured him holding Agnes as the light faded from her eyes and her body went limp, the poor child wedged lifeless somewhere in her. At some stage, thought Phoeba, he must have gone for a ride, far away, and bawled like a baby.
    â€˜Where is your aunt?’ said Maude, scooping boiled potatoes into the Oxford tureen Phoeba held.
    â€˜She doesn’t need to be here,’ said Lilith from the porch where she stood catching a breath of the breeze. Suddenly, she primped her hair, wrenched her corset to push her breasts up, grabbed the potatoes from Phoeba and went to the dining room, where she set the steaming bowl on the table and sat opposite Marius, in Maude’s seat. She placed one finger under her chin and listened intelligently to her father, who was asking about the new harvester at Overton.
    â€˜Well,’ said Marius, making a steeple with his fingers, ‘it will solve any labour problems forever.’
    â€˜Yes,’ said Lilith, nodding gravely.
    â€˜Not that anyone has any shortage of labour at the moment,’ said Phoeba, arriving with the beans.
    â€˜We get at least three beggars here a week,’ added Lilith, brightly, but Marius hadn’t time to respond because Maude arrived with carrots asking, ‘Are you ready to harvest, Marius?’
    Lilith started ladling carrots onto his plate.
    â€˜Yes,’ he said, watching the pile of carrots grow, ‘we’ve got a McKay Sunshine harvester on order, a new reaper-thresher. It winnows as it goes and then spurts out grain when it’s full. We’ll have our crop stripped and bagged in no time – when the thing gets here, that is.’
    â€˜So you’re doing the thresher team out of a job?’ said Phoeba.
    â€˜Well, of course, we still need stackers and chaff cutters.’ Marius stared at her, startled.
    â€˜And,’ said Robert, ‘we’ll need people for the grapes, by Jove.’
    Lilith flicked her serviette loudly, but Marius still didn’t look her way so she said, louder again, ‘Perhaps old Captain Swing’s men will storm over and ruin your new Sunshine.’
    He looked at her, perplexed.