The Widow of Ballarat by Darry Fraser

Author:Darry Fraser
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Mira

Straightening up in the late afternoon sun, Nell bunched her hands on the small of her back and stretched. The last of her personal washing was done and hung out. There was enough heat left in the day to get it dry before dark, and it might only take an hour or so. She’d bring it inside her tent to fold and stack in the small crates she used for storage.

The hum of the day throbbed to a lull. Women left the digs to tend the cooking fires. Working children found their way home to dinner. Men began to amble back to their tents from the creek to sup and rest up. It wouldn’t be long before those who took to drink would fire up the night, and gunshots and the bellows of the drunks would take over.

‘Nice-lookin’ smalls,’ Flora called over from her tent, her own washing and her mother’s flapping on the line behind.

‘The only good thing I got from my marriage. Good cotton drawers and chemises.’

‘Nice dresses, too.’ Flora nodded at a pile waiting to be washed the next day.

‘Only three I wanted to keep. Plenty for me now, especially if I give away wearing the black thing after the ball.’

‘Good for you. Too dreary by far. And no one cares about who’s wearing widow weeds, no one on the fields, anyhow.’ Flora ducked back into her tent, the flap left open to let air through.

Nell wasn’t so sure about that, but it didn’t matter to her. Widow weeds were for mourning, and she wasn’t mourning anyone, no matter that custom decreed she did.

As she bent to pick up the small tub she’d used to cart the wash from the fires to the line, she saw a horse and rider approach. A slow walk, unhurried, as if the rider knew exactly where he intended to stop. Oh no. He had a grin on his craggy face and a cabbage-tree hat on his head. His loose thin shirt opened at the neck, and patchy grey tufts of hair poked through. Her heart lurched.

‘There you are, daughter o’ mine. I heard you were on the fields again, an’ then I saw ye, from afar, not long back. I can tell me own anywhere, I can.’

Nell stared. He would’ve been the one to follow her. A hundred retorts came to mind, but her voice stuck in her throat. From the corner of her eye, she saw Flora bob out of her tent.

Alfred Thomas reined in, leaned over the horse’s mane a little. Settling in for a talk, it seemed. ‘We feel a bit put aside that you, yerself, never told us your sad news.’

Still silent and staring, Nell tried to form words that just would not come.

‘Now, I know that look. Means yer not so pleased to see me.’ The grin barely moved, but he ducked his head a moment, before his eyes met hers again.

Nell felt the menace of him moving in waves across the short distance, flaring in her chest each time her heart thudded.

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