The family numbered four, The Boss, tall distinguished in a very Australian
way, you could see he had come from a Property family, and had been to all
the best boarding schools, had the very best old fashioned manners but could
fit in to the country scene – be one of the boys, but always remain
the boss. He was in his early forties, weathered and tanned, tall and sinewy,
and with the litheness of a seasoned horseman. His name was Walter. He had
two daughters, the younger was ten years old and to be my charge – a
pretty child, but obviously the baby and spoiled by all, family and staff
alike. Her sister was my age and just home from her private boarding school
for young ladies of some standing in Sydney – where she had learned
all the social graces needed to go out and find just the right husband. Her
only ambition, I learned later, was to have her hands used in advertising
in glossy magazines.
Walter’s wife, and the mother of the two girls changed before my
eyes. At five o’clock, when we arrived, she was well spoken and the
perfect hostess, but by the time I had had my bath and got changed and joined
the party on the verandah she was starting to show her real colours!
The drought had been killing the land for years, and before that, long
before, when there was scrub and undergrowth, there had been terrible bush
fires. The practice when bushfires strike, is for the men to work together
to try to contain them before they run on a front that may end up 100 miles
wide – so the women all gather together at the biggest place in the
district, and the men go out and fight the fire, and stay out there until
the job is done.
Boatman was huge, and by far the biggest property in an area as big as
Wales – it had its own outdoor picture theatre, tennis courts, polo
cross fields, shearing shed standing 15 shearers – so it was to here
that the women came to wait for the fires to end.
The Boss always kept a proper house and was the perfect host, so drinks
were always plentiful, and here is where his wife came to meet her demon – she
drank and had a wonderful couple of weeks socialising with the women of
the district, but when they all went home, she found she couldn’t
stop drinking. That was 7 years before my time there – and she had
just got worse. Of course everything that could be tried was tried, she
had been sent to suitable places to be dried out and treated, but she slipped
back every time. It was the boredom – she had nothing to do all day,
and the boss was always out working somewhere.
By the time I arrived it was evident that the only recourse was to watch
her every minute of the waking day, and for this reason the Boss would normally
take her with him in the truck, everywhere. Today, she had been watched
by the Manager – and had managed to remain sober, but once that heavenly
5 o’clock came round, Walter would say to her “go your hardest
old girl!” and she would start drinking – four fingers of scotch
at a time, so that by 8pm when we all trooped into the very formal dining
room she could hardly walk.
The dining room was huge, wood panelled, with great sideboards covered
in silverware and decanters. The long dining table could seat 24, but normally
there were seven or eight, including the child and me. The housemaid would
serve, and we always began with soup. The Boss had a joke that he told every
night about soup – and his father – and being deaf – it
ended with, “soup, are you deaf?”
Mrs would then pick up a bread roll, and very elegantly and comically
throw it at her husband, who was sitting at the other end of the long table – saying
at the same time – “Walter, you are a bastard!” and then
fall off her chair onto the floor, dead drunk.
The main course always waited until she had been carried off and put to
bed. I can’t remember ever seeing that woman eat!! – she was
a very unhappy woman.
What amazed me was that dinner would resume as if nothing had happened,
and every single night it was the same.
The supplies and mail came the 80 miles from town twice a week on the mail
truck, and as the family were known in the town, it only took a phone call
to order anything, and Mrs had many enablers in town. The dressmaker was
her main pal, and would often smuggle a bottle out on the mail truck. When
this happened the alarm bells would ring, metaphorically speaking of course,
about 10.30 in the morning, when the boss couldn’t find her until
he stumbled across her, dead drunk on the verandah or out under the tank
stand – or in the shearers quarters, where she had been known to socialise
for a drink. Then we all had to drop everything and search the place until
we found the stash.
I did wonder if I had stumbled into a film set – but the housemaid
quickly filled me in on the history and the practices, and I learned more
about alcoholism in a week than most people would in a life time.
My education had started, and I haven’t even told you about being
a governess yet…..
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