Elianne Read online

  The week before her return to Queensland for the Christmas holidays she’d visited a doctor and put herself on the contraceptive pill for that express purpose.

  ‘I’ll see you in the New Year,’ she’d whispered as he’d kissed her goodbye at the train station, and they’d both known exactly what she meant.

  Having passed by the cookhouse and mess hall, and then the bakery, Kate reached the village green, with Elianne Hall to her right. The estate’s village green and hall had been social centres throughout the whole of her childhood, as they had throughout the childhoods of many of her contemporaries, and also those of generations past.

  She came to a halt, once again chastising herself, but this time in a more serious vein. I really must put Jeremy and sex out of my mind, she thought crossly. She’d been away from Elianne for close on a year and yet her head was full of the impending loss of her virginity. If she went on like this she’d ruin her entire holiday.

  She sat on the hall’s front step, Cobber flopping contentedly at her feet, Ben as ever wandering off to explore. Looking out across the village green she recalled the many fetes and picnics, where teams of small children had competed in every imaginable event contrived to excite and enthral the young. Workers’ children of all colour and creed: Australians, Italians, a few Kanakas and Chinese, English, Scots, here and there the odd Scandinavian and German, here and there several Torres Strait Islanders. She could see them all now, herself included, running themselves ragged in three-legged races, staggering clumsily about in hessian sacks and hauling on twenty yards of rope as if their lives depended upon winning the tug o’ war.

  The same fetes and picnics and parties continued to this very day. The numbers had dwindled somewhat of late, but Stan the Man insisted tradition be upheld. She’d been home for just one week, and on the Saturday following her arrival there’d been a pre-Christmas picnic attended by at least twenty families. She and her younger brother Alan, who was home from boarding school, had handed out the presents and the toffee-apples, while Neil, soon to turn twenty, the oldest of the three and heir apparent, had awarded the prizes, a job that had always been the domain of their father. These days, however, Stanley Durham, while remaining as dominant a figure as ever, preferred to sit on the sidelines like a benign monarch, surveying his realm, his subjects and his family with pride.

  The Durham siblings, although no longer among those youngsters so fiercely competing, had shared in the recognition, and taken pleasure in the knowledge that some things hadn’t changed, and some things probably never would. Kate smiled now as she recalled their exchange. Not one word had been spoken, but the glances they’d shared had said everything. They’d been children again: ten or eight or six, no matter, the two-year age difference between each of them had never formed a barrier. Throughout the whole of their childhood, they’d been the three musketeers, and she, in the middle, had been the lynch pin. Kate loved her brothers dearly.

  And as for the hall, she thought, turning to look over her shoulder, well the hall hasn’t changed one bit. The building indeed seemed to belong in a time warp – it had been the same for as long as she could remember.

  Elianne Hall, as it was grandly known, was really just a vast timber-framed building with a tin roof, but for the mill’s workers and extended family it had been a vital hub for generations. Here every form of festivity had taken place, concerts and parties for all occasions, along with birthdays, weddings and wakes. The hall also served as a Sunday school, and not only for the workers’ children. Attendance by the Durham siblings had been mandatory.

  Again Kate wondered why everything seemed so poignant. Is it just because I’ve been away so long? she asked herself. Or is it because I’ve changed? Everything else appears to have remained much the same. It must surely be me.

  She stood. Time to go home. She was hungry now – she’d skipped breakfast for an early-morning walk down by the river.

  Cobber, who’d been dozing in the sun, stretched and joined her as she set off. Ben was nowhere in sight, but she didn’t need to call him. Within minutes he’d appeared and was racing on ahead.

  Across the village green, she could see several girls around fifteen years of age wending their way homewards along the rough bush track. They were animatedly chattering as they returned from their morning stints at Elianne’s cattle yards and dairy a half a mile away. Kate gave them a wave and they waved back. She knew each one of the dairymaids: two were the daughters of the dairy farmer himself, and the third was the butcher’s daughter, who was earning extra money during her school holidays. Their fathers were not seasonal itinerate workers, but lived on the estate running their businesses year-round as many did.

  During the crushing season, several hundred mill and field workers were employed at Elianne, the cookhouse working round the clock to provide dawn breakfasts, packed lunches, smokos, evening meals and shift dinners for the hundred or so accommodated in the single men’s barracks. Throughout the slack season, however, Elianne remained a self-sustaining village catering to the families who lived on the estate. It boasted a general store, a bakery, and a butcher’s shop that was regularly supplied with fresh meat from the nearby piggery and cattle slaughter yards.

  With only two thousand acres of the property under cane, the majority of the mill’s produce came from local farmers, some of whose children worked on the estate alongside others who travelled by foot or bicycle from the settlement of South Kolan, only two miles away. Given the affordability of vehicles and the easy access of modern roads, there were also those who now commuted from Bundaberg, but despite the changes wrought by progress, Elianne remained a community, and a vibrant one at that. Elianne was a family to which people were proud to belong.

  Kate walked on down the road, passing the attractive cottages of South Mill Row with their front verandahs and pretty little gardens. One of these was home to Luigi Fiorelli and his family. There were several such rows of cottages on the estate, but the others offered far more basic accommodation than those of South Mill Row, which were reserved for the permanently employed and most valuable of workers. Indeed, the hierarchy of Elianne could be immediately detected in the architecture of the housing allotted to its employees. To the north of the mill were the single men’s barracks, to the east and the west the rows of rudimentary cottages reserved for married workers, and then there was South Mill Row. After that there followed a further distinctly upwards curve, for the homes allotted to Elianne’s senior staff were a different matter altogether. There were at least a half a dozen of them dotted about the estate, gracious affairs of striking design: stilted wooden, Queensland-style houses with broad verandahs, perfectly suited to the climate.

  None, however, was as grand as Durham House. Always referred to simply as The Big House, the Durham family home was nothing short of magnificent. The Big House appeared three stories high, but it wasn’t really, this was just an illusion. The attractive white-painted lattice work flanking the broad stairs that led up to its first-floor verandah masked only storage space and a laundry, for this house too stood very tall on its stilts. Its elevation gained impressive views on all sides both of the river a quarter of a mile away and also of the plantation. From the balconies of The Big House the cane trains could be regularly observed during the crushing season, even at night, lights gleaming in the distance, feeding the hungry mill the hundred and fifty tons of cane it devoured every hour.

  Painted white with railings of green, and surrounded on all sides by wooden verandahs and upper-storey balconies, the house lounged in its landscaped gardens and tennis courts like an indolent giant. It was too huge and too opulent to be elegant, but also too beautiful to be crass, the finishing touches of oak doors and wooden-framed French windows saving it from even the harshest of critics. Hilda Durham had seen to that.

  Stan the Man had had the house designed along the lines of the original Elianne House, built by his grandfather in 1890, which, since the death of old Big Jim Durham twelve years previously, h
ad served as home to Ivan Krantz and his family. Ivan was the estate’s managing accountant and company secretary. The only adjustment Stan had made to the original design of the house, or so he’d said at the time, was to quadruple the size of the place and add another storey with balconies.

  ‘The same only bigger,’ he’d assured his wife shortly before Neil was born. Hilda had loved the old house. In fact, she’d loved Elianne House far more than the modern residence Stan had had specially built as their marital home. ‘We’ll need the extra space with family on the way,’ he’d insisted, when she’d queried whether the size he envisaged might be a little vulgar, ‘and of course there are always the visitors. We must be able to accommodate our visitors in style. They expect it my dear, just as they did in Big Jim’s time.’

  It had been Hilda who had had the final say, however, particularly with regard to the interior. The grand oak staircase leading to the upper floor had become a principal feature, as had the wooden panelling in the main dining room and the various sitting rooms. Doors with frosted-glass panels featuring original designs, crystal chandeliers, wall-bracket light fittings of brass, lead-light and stained-glass windows, together with Hilda’s personal selection of objets d’art and paintings had completed the final touches. Stanley Durham very wisely never questioned his wife’s taste.

  Kate bounded up the front steps three at a time, the dogs flopping on the verandah; they were not allowed inside the house.

  The family was having morning tea in the smaller downstairs drawing room as she’d presumed they would be. Or at least as she’d presumed her mother would be. Hilda insisted upon morning and afternoon tea being served in the front drawing room. Even if no one else attended, and they very often didn’t, Hilda would quite happily sit there, sipping away at her tea and nibbling at her cake or scones. She never demanded anyone join her; the ritual was all she required.

  To Kate’s surprise, everyone was there, her father lounging in his favoured armchair, her mother perched as always in her carver at the table and Neil and Alan seated on hardback chairs demolishing the slices of sponge cake that young Ivy the maid had just passed around.

  ‘Morning all,’ Kate said, looking a query from one to the other. She hadn’t expected to see her brothers.

  Hilda signalled Ivy to fetch a fresh pot of tea and Stan signalled his daughter to sit.

  Kate did so. ‘What’s going on?’

  ‘Dad’s called a family meeting,’ Alan replied with a typically nonchalant ‘don’t ask me’ shrug.

  ‘What about?’

  ‘Change.’ Neil dived in diplomatically before Alan could offer another careless shrug. His younger brother’s nonchalance had a way of irritating their father. Placing his side plate on the table and giving his mouth a perfunctory dab with his linen napkin in order to appease their mother’s constant plea for good table manners, he stood. ‘Dad decided to leave it a week or so for you two to settle back in before calling this meeting to discuss some developments undertaken by Elianne Pty Limited.’ Neil’s address to his siblings was solemn and Kate and Alan exchanged looks. Home being ‘Elianne’ and the family business ‘Elianne Pty Limited’ Neil was wearing his ‘Company Hat’. Normally they would have teased him about it, but not today, not in front of their father.

  ‘There have been a lot of changes over the past year or so . . .’ Neil cast a look to Stan whose brisk nod conveyed the unmistakeable order to carry on. Stanley Durham was very proud of his eldest son. Since completing his boarding-school education three years previously, Neil had been drilled in every area of mill management and was proving the perfect heir to the throne.

  ‘Given your time away at uni, Kate,’ Neil continued, ‘you may not be fully aware of the fact that we’re in a state of transition, and that there is indeed further change in the air.’

  Change in the air. Recalling her earlier reflections, Kate found the phrase extraordinarily apt. Perhaps it isn’t me after all, she thought.

  ‘In the field, the mechanisation of cultivation and harvesting and loading is revolutionising the sugar industry . . .’ Neil’s focus remained principally upon his sister. There was no need to talk mechanics with his younger brother. At fifteen, Alan knew more about the specifics of any given machine than Neil would ever know. Having been obsessed with machinery from the age of ten, Alan spent every moment available to him in the mill or in the maintenance workshops with the man he adored above all others, his friend and mentor, Luigi Fiorelli. Alan was a born mechanic.

  Kate nodded. Neil was telling her nothing she hadn’t registered. How could one fail to observe the recent changes brought about by mechanisation, particularly those wrought by the harvester. The mechanical harvester was already replacing whole teams of manual cane-cutters. The very face of the industry was being transformed.

  ‘Several other major mills that service the southern cane fields are expanding,’ Neil explained, now addressing himself to Alan. ‘They’re increasing their crushing tonnage and also their rate of crushing per hour. Elianne must follow suit.’

  Ivy had arrived and was setting the fresh pot of tea on the table. Hilda raised a delicate hand, indicating that she herself would play ‘mother’ and, as Ivy left, Neil continued without pausing to draw breath.

  ‘. . . And to this end, it is our intention to purchase substantial new mill machinery –’

  ‘What sort of machinery?’ Alan interrupted, his attention instantly captured.

  ‘Four new Broadbent high-grade centrifugals, two new Thompson four-drum water tube boilers, and a Saranin design vacuum pan.’ Discarding the ‘Company Hat’, Neil’s tone was suddenly boastful and his grin boyish as he listed, like a series of prizes, the proposed acquisitions, knowing how very impressed Alan would be.

  Alan was. With duly raised eyebrows, he returned his brother’s grin, looking exactly like a younger version of Neil. Much as the two differed in temperament, they shared the Durham look – the look of their father and his father before him, both chisel-boned, dark-haired, impressive men.

  ‘Where’s the money going to come from?’ Alan said, intrigued. ‘They’ll cost a lot. Machines like that don’t come cheap.’

  His remark was more a comment than a query but, delivered in his customary laconic fashion, it annoyed his father.

  ‘That’s no concern of yours, boy,’ Stan growled. ‘Ivan has everything in hand. He’s issuing limited shares in the company and selling them to raise the necessary capital. He and your brother and I have had endless discussion regarding the mill’s expansion and investment. It’s hardly your place to question our decision.’

  Alan gave another shrug that appeared careless, but really he was just giving up. He hadn’t been questioning the decision at all, but there was no point in arguing. Father and younger son did not understand each other and never had.

  Once again it was Neil who sprang to the rescue, as he invariably did. ‘With the increase in milling efficiency, we’ll be saving in other areas,’ he explained. ‘For a start, there’ll be fewer workers needed on each shift to operate the mill, and that’s just one of the expense-saving factors. Ivan says that –’

  Stan decided it was time to take over.

  ‘Which brings us to other major areas of change,’ he said as he rose from the throne of his armchair. ‘Thank you, my dear,’ he accepted the fresh cup of tea his wife offered him, ‘and thank you, Neil.’ It was a signal for his son to sit, which Neil did, but not before delivering the cup of tea his mother had poured for his sister.

  Stan sipped his tea, waiting until everyone was settled. He liked to make an impact and was accustomed to receiving the undivided attention of any audience he addressed, which was why the occasionally offhand manner of his younger son so annoyed him. He considered it disrespectful.

  At fifty years of age, Stanley Durham gave the impression of being a big man, one who towered over others. But standing just short of six feet, he was not overly tall by Queensland standards. Perhaps it was the way he carried hi
mself with such pride. Perhaps it was the strength of his build, or his dark, brooding eyes and handsome head of hair, now flecked with grey. Whatever the chief contributing factor may have been, Stanley Durham’s overall image was that of a ‘larger than life’ man. It was certainly the way he saw himself. It was the way he wished to be perceived and therefore the way he was perceived.

  Assured of his family’s full attention Stan now made his dramatic announcement.

  ‘Ivan Krantz will be leaving Elianne at the end of next month.’

  A moment’s silence followed as Kate and Alan exchanged looks of bewilderment. Ivan had been the mill’s accountant and company secretary for the past twelve years. He and his wife and son had lived in old Elianne House all that time. The Krantzes and the Durhams had been as close as two families could be. Why would Ivan choose to leave the mill, and particularly now, after instigating such changes?

  ‘You’re being naughty, Stanley. You mustn’t tease.’ Hilda’s rebuke was mild. She was a gracious woman who, even in the admonishment of her children, never raised her voice. To Hilda, decorum always remained the order of the day.

  Stan laughed. He’d enjoyed the effect of his statement, his intention having been to confuse and bewilder. ‘No, no, you misunderstand,’ he said expansively. ‘Ivan’s not leaving the mill, he’s just moving from the estate into Bundaberg. He’ll remain Elianne’s company secretary and he’ll still be personally handling our business.’ Stan was obviously happy with the arrangement, and genuinely pleased for his friend. ‘Ivan and young Henry are setting up offices in Bourbong Street, right in the centre of town, and Elianne is to be their very first client.’