The Noon Lady of Towitta by Patricia Sumerling Read Free Book Online Page A

pull clothes from the clothes line made of barbed wire stretched between two native pine poles. Father made it this way because he thought the strongest winds could not blow away clothes secured to the barbs. However, if the wind hadn’t managed to blow all the clothes off the line they were often ruined by the barbarous spikes. When they were blown away countless hours were spent searching the paddocks for the missing clothes that we could not afford to lose. Sometimes after a big blow they were never seen again.
    Sometimes when I was hanging out the washing or feeding poultry, a whiff of some far-off scent such as sandalwood would fill the air as the wind blew. I often wondered where some of the scents had blown from, and closed my eyes and wished I could be there, anywhere as long as it was as far away from Towitta and Father as possible.
    After the remains of our family moved to Light’s Pass I often sat in a field of waving grass or corn, remembering the times I saw the sea when I lived in Adelaide. Even now in the bleak confines of the Consumptive Home I often dream of seeing the sparkle on the sea in the way that I first saw it one early spring morning. It glinted like silver paper and the salty smell was strong on that Sunday morning when Rebekah, the friend I worked with, and I took the train to Semaphore. In the spring when the meadow grass is at its longest, I would sit on a small hill at Light’s Pass and watch it waving in the wind until it became the waves on the sea. That’s how I travelled in my mind to the edge of the world and escaped my life.

5
    Just after our midday meal the next day, Sister Kathleen rushed in to say she could spend half an hour with me as she was between chores and the matron had gone home early feeling unwell. She took my arm and walked me out to the verandah where we found a sheltered spot away from the breeze that was making sitting outside unpleasant.
    â€˜Sit here, Mary,’ she said, patting a cushioned chair. ‘I’ll sit over here so I can see what’s going on. I may have to suddenly leave you when someone discovers I’m missing. Yesterday you were going to tell me about living in a Wendish home in that lonely place and what made it different from mine.’
    You’d have noticed the difference the moment you stepped inside the kitchen of our house. From Aunt Giscelia and Mother, Pauline and I learned about our ancestors – including our adopted grandparents – who came from Upper Saxony in the Fatherland. My father preferred his mother tongue of Wendish, which he spoke at home or when he was in company with his sister, Giscelia, and my grandparents. When Pauline and I stayed with Aunt Giscelia and her family, especially when we were young girls, we would talk solely in this strange language. Like Father, we also told Wendish folktales and sang the songs we knew. Aunt Giscelia had a voice like a songbird and sang solo in church, or at home when they had spinning evenings. We were constantly reminded of our grandfather’s loss at sea, because he had been a troubadour with a fine voice before he settled down to a forester’s life.
    Whereas in Germany spinning was with flax, the tradition was adapted and continued in South Australia by spinning wool instead. Aunt Giscelia was the local Kantorka, leading the singing and teaching others the many songs she knew. She took over the role from Katie-Lizzie, her aunt. I was sure she never reached the end of her huge stock of songs for we always seemed to be learning new ones. It was these ‘foreign ways’ that made us different, but we would not relinquish them. We continued to cook in our own way, to tat, crochet, knit, sew, spin, weave, sing and paint hard-boiled eggs at Easter. We loved to hear the old family songs that were laments about lost love or nature.
    It was through folktales that our hopes and desires took root. At night Pauline and I would tell each other stories