Requiem for a Wren Read Free

middle-aged and mature, able to realise and to appreciate that it was not only in England that important things went on, that there were things of consequence and value going on even in my own country. Even the job that I had spurned before, the job of running Coombargana to turn out more meat and wool each year, now seemed to me to be worth doing, not one that would impress the world or get me a knighthood, but a job within my powers and worth doing in a gentle, unsensational way. I owed it to my parents to come home for they were getting tired and old, and sometimes rather ill, and now that I was home I was glad that I had come.
    We drove into the suburbs of Ballarat and went trickling along like a twenty-year-old Austin Seven. I turned to Hairy by my side. This bloody parlourmaid' I said. 'You say she was English. Do you know if she had any relations in Australia?'
    'I never heard she had, Mr. Alan,' he replied. 'Your Dad might know.'
    'Did my parents get her through a registry office?'
    He shook his head. 'She turned up in Forfar at the Post Office Hotel one day, by bus from Ballarat I think it was. Working her way round the world, with a rucksack on her back - hiking, you might say. She worked in the hotel with
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    Mrs. Collins for a week or two. Then she come out with the postman one day for the ride. Your parents had a Polish married couple but the man was always on the grog, 'n your Dad gave them the sack. Then this girl came along and offered herself for the job, and your mother took her on.'
    'How long ago was that?'
    'Let's see,' he said. 'It was wintertime. August, I'd say -August a year ago.'
    I thought about it for a minute. 'Do you know where she went for her holiday?'
    'I don't think she took one - not whilst she was working at Coombargana.'
    'What was her name?'
    'Jessie Proctor.'
    He weaved the Jaguar skilfully through the traffic of the town and drove out down the Avenue of Honour and turned off on to the Skipton road. 'You may find your parents kind of upset' he said presently. 'She was the best help they had in the house since I've been at Coombargana. I think they liked her, too.'
    'They did?'
    'I think so, Mr. Alan." He paused, and then said awkwardly, 'I thought you ought to know, case you might say anything rough about her, not knowing.'
    I nodded. 'Thanks for telling me.' We drove along in silence while I thought this over. 'If she was happy in the place whatever made her go and do a thing like that?'
    'I dunno, Mr. Alan,' he replied. 'I dunno what makes girls go and do the things they do.'
    I sat silent, thinking all this over. If my mother had grown attached to this girl it made things so much the worse, and nothing was more likely if she was a decent girl. My mother was now crippled with arthritis and could not get about very much, so that she met few people and perhaps was rather lonely, which was one of the reasons why I had come home. In a big house like Coombargana that must be run with indoor servants, unsatisfactory servants can be a continual worry and a nuisance to a woman in my mother's state of health, and they had had a long succession of mar-
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    ried couples who had come for a few days and departed without notice because the place was too isolated, or had quarrelled with Annie our old cook, or had got drunk, or had stolen things. If in the end a girl had turned up who worked happily at Coombargana and made no trouble it was very likely that my mother would have grown to depend on her and might even have treated her more as a companion than as a servant. An English girl working her way round the world would be a well-informed person, possibly even well educated. She might have been a great comfort to my mother.
    We passed through Skip ton while I sat in silence thinking of these things and many others, and ran on into the undulating pastoral landscape that was my own place, a country not unlike Wiltshire in England but without the people, so that you can stand on almost any hill top