Free The Noon Lady of Towitta by Patricia Sumerling

elder brothers, Frederick and Heinrich. He saw the two elder boys as friends of the gang and cruelly stepped up his tyranny over them. He tormented them, delving out harsh beatings, but one day when attempting to horse whip them for a minor indiscretion they turned on him and whipped him instead. Before he had recovered from the thrashing they dashed into one of the nearby wooded creeks where they hid for some days before heading to the farm of Mother’s brother in Eden Valley.
    But the violence did not end there. Early one January morning, a few days before I went to live in Adelaide, another hawker, Fred Struckmeyer, was found dead in Sedan. On several occasions he had risked visiting our farm after Mr Khan’s death. The policeman, William Burgenmeister, found him on the roadway and believed he had been killed in a fight for his skull was crushed in as though attacked with a blunt heavy object. The findings of the inquest were different. The cause was unconfirmed, but it was believed he must have fallen from his cart and been crushed by the wheels. At the time his cart was fully laden with new stock and this would have added to its weight making it capable of crushing his head.
    Sister Kathleen must have been growing accustomed to the bizarre aspects of my family stories. She looked neither shocked nor stunned but just seemed to breathe deeply and shake her head. Then she eagerly looked up, anticipating the next instalment. Whenever I suggested we should call an end to the storytelling, she pleaded with me not to stop.
    â€˜So that all happened just as you were going to live in Adelaide. My goodness, I’d have been glad to leave all that behind too. Perhaps you could tell me of what happened to you in Adelaide when I next come. It can’t be for a few days, as we are short staffed because some nurses are away with this terrible flu that’s going around. We have also had quite a few new patients admitted. It would not be exaggerating to call it bedlam.’

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    The next time Sister Kathleen came she brought me skeins of lemon-coloured wool for knitting. It was a sunny day and she took me again into a shady part of the garden to a bench under one of the large peppercorn trees. She said we probably wouldn’t be disturbed there.
    â€˜And I’ve brought us some fruit cake to share.’
    She made me comfortable with a rug over my lap before I began the story of the next part of my life spent in Adelaide as a servant to a wealthy family.
    The Waters family lived in a large two-storey house in North Adelaide that overlooked the Parklands and the centre of the city. I assisted a servant named Rebekah who was two years older than me. I helped her with the laundry, general housekeeping and in the kitchen. We came from the same region and our families knew each other from church. When Mrs Waters asked Rebekah if she knew of another girl who would like a situation, Rebekah – who had been at school with Pauline – thought of me.
    It was no easy matter to leave the farm even though the money I earned in Adelaide would help it survive. Father erupted into spasms of rage at Mother who he believed had plotted with Mrs Waters to arrange the job. His intention was that none of us would ever leave the farm; but for the tightening grip of the never-ending drought, I doubted that I ever would have. Mother kept reminding him just how poor we really were and the common sense of allowing me to work for this well-to-do and highly regarded Adelaide family. Father grudgingly surrendered but only from fear of offending the Waters family. And he was consoled when he learned how much I would earn and how much of that would be passed to him.
    Mother had told me, ‘Of course you can keep a few shillings from your wages but you will have to send us the rest, at least until matters here improve. And perhaps, Mary, you will find yourself a nice young man there.’ And so I left home for Adelaide when I was almost