A Bitter Harvest Read online

  It was almost a week before he saw her again.

  By then he had managed to find out more about her. Her name was Elizabeth Patterson, and she was travelling home to Sydney with her mother. The German-speaking sailor who told him this warned him not to waste his time. Miss Patterson, he said, was every officer’s choice as a dance partner. She was popular, the best-looking girl on board. He advised Stefan to forget her.

  Elizabeth wrote to her father.

  Dearest Papa,

  The Egyptian traders came aboard at Port Said, and it was like a bazaar, with them trying to sell us veils and cloth, and even postcards which lots of the men seemed interested in, but Mama would not allow me to look at. The canal is amazing, about one hundred miles long, and you can stand on deck and see both shores, and sometimes see tribes of Bedouins making camp. From a distance they look quite romantic, but the ship’s officers tell me that’s only from a distance!

  I think the officers only like English people, because they didn’t have a good word to say about the Italians when we called at Naples. Tomorrow we reach Suez, and turn left (that’s port!) across the Indian Ocean. Looking forward to Singapore and Raffles.

  Much love as always,

  Lizzie.

  She paused thoughtfully and added: PS. Mama sends her love. It was more a note than a real letter, but she wrote to him each day, no matter how briefly, and had done so all the time they had been away. At each new port of call or city, she made up a package addressed to her father, and sent them home. It was like a diary, and he had written to say how he would keep them in a folder for her, so she would always have them, to remember her first world trip when she was seventeen.

  She rose from the desk in their stateroom. The door to her mother’s cabin was shut, and she did not disturb her. She felt sorry for Mama. Elizabeth knew this long tour had not been easy for her. So many cities, the constant travel, the numerous hotels. There was the heat wave in Rome, and the exuberant Italian youths following her, ignoring Mama’s indignation as they blew kisses and called out cheeky invitations. She smiled as she recalled her mother’s astonished face the day when she — her Mama — had had her bottom pinched on the Via Veneto. From that day on she had carried a parasol ready to strike back, but no one had pinched her again.

  Elizabeth went outside and found some people playing deck quoits. She shook her head when a young man asked her to join them. The Second Officer saw her from the bridge, saluting with a confident smile. She nodded politely and turned away. The Second Officer was extremely handsome; and no one knew it better than he did. Elizabeth found him dull and self-opinionated. She walked towards the bow, where she could be alone. It was nice at times to be on her own.

  That was when she looked down and saw the boy again.

  Stefan’s cramped six-berth cabin was stifling and noisy, because of its proximity to the engines. He spent every moment possible on the small deck available to third-class passengers. The area was restricted, with barriers and notices warning that it was prohibited to pass beyond this point. But the tiny deck space was better than the hot cabin, where he would lie awake wondering why he had decided to come, trying to recall Christina and her soft dark hair, the gentle curve of her breast, remembering his last night with her and the voices of the carol singers. And how, after the carols, he had escorted her home, taken her hand for the last time and chastely kissed her.

  It had been Christina who responded. Her lips had grown warm, and then they were straining together, his groin bursting with an erection. Stefan knew that she was aware of it as he felt her heartbeat quicken, and she thrust herself against him. He was dizzy with sudden excitement and a passion about to be fulfilled. And then the moment was gone.

  Christina stepped back, the start of tears in his eyes as she swore she would miss him desperately, and if only they could — but they mustn’t — they couldn’t. She had been swept away by her fondness for him. His senses numb and reeling with thwarted lust, an embarrassing testimony to it between his legs, he dimly remembered agreeing it would be wrong. He swore he would write, declared he would be home again within a few years, his fortune made; she promised to remember him every night; while these and other lovers’ lies were exchanged, he stood there, the tell-tale bulge in his trousers refusing to go down. He wanted to kiss her hand, to say something clever, to leave with style — but it was hopeless.

  In fact it was worse than that. He fought, tried to control it, but as she wistfully kissed his cheek he felt the first spasm, the involuntary ejaculation, the inside of his trousers now moist and —

  ‘Hello there,’ a voice beside him said, shocking him out of his memory. He found himself gazing into astonishingly blue eyes framed by light blonde hair. She laughed at his surprise. ‘Goodness, you jumped. Did I give you a fright?’

  Stefan gaped at her, unable to answer.

  ‘You seemed awfully deep in thought, or else dreaming. Was it a dream? Did I interrupt?’

  Her words ran into each other; his English, although improving, was not yet able to cope with this deluge. ‘Guten Morgen, gnddiges Frauiein,’ he said clumsily.

  ‘Sorry,’ the girl said. ‘I don’t speak German. Is it German?’

  ‘la. Yes,’ he hastily corrected himself.

  She waited, as if it was now up to him to continue, rather than gaze blankly at her. He wondered what he could say. She was poised to leave, to move to the stairs that would take her out of his orbit, as if regretting whatever impulse had brought her here. He felt inadequate, her sudden appearance having frozen his mind; and he could think of nothing he might do or say to delay her.

  He dearly wished he could. He liked her smile, and the brilliant eyes, and he wanted to listen to the English she spoke, with its flattened vowels and sometimes rising inflection. It was an accent new to him, and from her delicate mouth, enchanting.

  ‘You’re staring at me,’ she said. ‘Did you know that? Do you always stare at people?’

  ‘I beg pardon,’ he was conscious of his guttural intonation, and anxious to eliminate this. ‘I am, how do you say, without too much of English speaking.’

  She laughed, but not unkindly. It was soft, like music. He did not mind that the laughter was because of his fractured syntax. It was suddenly important to keep her there, to hear the laughter again, to see the way her face animated like a mischievous child’s.

  ‘Elizabeth?’ The voice came from somewhere above. The girl made a face.

  ‘It’s my mother,’ she said hurriedly. ‘She’s not seasick today, so she’s worrying where I am and if I’m behaving myself properly. It really is so dreary up there in first class. Lots of snobby English people getting off at Singapore, only they call it orf.’ She smiled at his bewildered expression, and when he failed to reply, she continued, ‘Even worse, snobby Australians all telling each other how much money they have, and who they met on the Grand Tour. You can’t believe how dull and awful they are.’

  ‘Pardon,’ he managed finally to say, and she laughed again.

  It was entrancing. He wished he could go on making inane remarks and keep her there, laughing, forever.

  ‘Elizabeth … ?’

  The voice was more plaintive than peremptory. It was also considerably closer.

  ‘I must go,’ the girl said. ‘Poor Mama hasn’t had much fun, and I don’t want to upset her.’

  She opened the gate, passing through the barrier that prevented him from accompanying her. He watched in despair as she began to leave, climbing the metal stairs of the companionway. Then she paused and looked back at him.

  ‘Tomorrow,’ she suggested. ‘This time tomorrow?’

  He did not fully understand, but clearly a question had been asked and she was awaiting an answer.

  ‘la,’ he said. ‘Yes.’

  ‘Fine,’ the girl said, smiling. ‘la. I’ll look forward to it.’

  He watched her the rest of the way, then after she had gone he went in search of the same sailor to ask him what the phrase ‘th
is time tomorrow’ meant. The sailor clearly thought he was crazy, when, after being told, Stefan threw back his head and let out a shout of joy.

  THREE

  It was quite different this time; quite different from his relationship with Christina. In its way, it was far more innocent. Their meetings on the third-class deck, the following day and every day after that, were animated by their attempts to communicate. She told him to call her Elizabeth, and taught him to pronounce it the way she did. He learned that her family home was opposite a park in Sydney, and they had servants: in particular a coachman named Forbes, and his wife who served as the housekeeper. Her father was a well-known businessman, and had sent her on a world trip as a present for her seventeenth birthday, with her mother as chaperone.

  She had loved it, every minute, but her poor Mama suffered from seasickness, and had little interest in foreign places. Also, her mother was not good with strangers, so the months they had been away, with the necessity to communicate with others and the tribulations of travel — it had all been rather an ordeal for her.

  It took time to absorb all this. They used his German dictionary a great deal, and she laughed frequently at his jumbled phrases. The sound of her laughter never failed to enthral him.

  There was no lust in his feeling towards her, nothing sensual.

  He was too busy trying to interpret her sentences, too tired at night, his mind engaged with remembering new words and the complexities of English tenses, to have amorous or romantic dreams. Their meetings became the focal point of each day, and time flew because they were engrossed, she the teacher, he the pupil. He felt more able to converse and knew he was learning; thus he looked forward eagerly to every meeting, rehearsing words, planning things to try to tell her.

  They became — before anything else — friends.

  The ship docked at Singapore, and for a desolate forty-eight hours he did not see her. She and her mother had gone ashore, she later told him, and spent the night at Raffles Hotel. Her father had arranged for her to see this historic landmark. She described the famous bar with its string orchestra, the pink gins favoured by English planters and administrators with their pampered wives, the notices forbidding entry to Malays and Chinese, and how the bathrooms were the largest she had ever seen, vast marble retreats even more luxurious than Claridges in London.

  As for Stefan, he hated Singapore and the Raffles Hotel, and the entire forty-eight hours. He had spent it trudging in monsoonal heat around the dockyards of the Tanjong Company, and the crowded beggars’ bazaar at Lo Pan. With some of his cabin companions, he had dutifully toured the few public buildings of note: Sir Stamford Raffles’ first Government House, the law courts, a cathedral, the gaol and the lunatic asylum.

  He missed her more than he could have believed possible.

  It was after they left the Malay Archipelago, that their feelings began to change. There was less laughter. They found they were no longer at ease with each other. They were conscious of pauses in their conversations, sudden silences. They framed things they wanted to say, thought about them, and said something else.

  Their meetings became uncomfortable.

  The ship steamed south-west, staying a day at Batavia, through the Strait of Madura and Surabaya, and on to Timor where Elizabeth and her mother went ashore as guests of the British Resident at Kupang. It was there she received a letter from her father with the news he was now an elected politician in the New South Wales Parliament. She told Stefan about it, and expressed her pleasure. It was what he had always hoped to be, and she looked forward eagerly to seeing him in action.

  Stefan said little. He was becoming afraid of the passing days.

  At night in the cramped cabin he would lie awake, calculating the ship’s speed, the few stops still to be made, the distance left to Sydney where Elizabeth’s voyage would end. He would be continuing on to the port of Melbourne, and then overland by train to the Victorian border where he would change to the South Australian rail system, travel to the town of Murray Bridge, and then by bullock cart to Hahndorf. It had all been painstakingly written down in Uncle Johann’s solitary letter.

  Each day he read the ship’s progress report, and with sinking heart saw the number of nautical miles diminish. By the time the vessel was in the Torres Strait, with a call to be made at Cairns and a brief stay at Brisbane, he calculated there were only ten days left. He grew morose and despondent, knowing that once she left the ship the chance of ever seeing her again was negligible. He had moments when he felt it might have been better if they had never met. He could still be dreaming his silly distant dreams of Christina, whose features by now he could hardly recall.

  And then they were off the port of Newcastle, a mere twelve hours out of Sydney, and there was no time left at all.

  Stefan could hear the strains of the orchestra from the upper-deck salon. The first-class passengers were attending the Captain’s Farewell Ball. The sound of gaiety, of raised voices and laughter, came clearly to him, as he stood at the stem of the ship, the wash fanned out on the surface of the sea behind him. He could make out the dark shoreline to the west, the occasional fringes of sand and silver gleam of surf in the moonlight. It seemed forbidding and very alien.

  He had been waiting for some time. She was late, but he would wait all night if necessary. He hoped there would be no patrol, no purser or steward to challenge his presence. He had climbed the companionway and stepped over the notice which forbad him to trespass further. If she had asked, he would have intruded into the salon itself, except that it would have embarrassed her and upset her mother, whose voice he had so often heard calling Elizabeth, but whom he had never met.

  There was a sound of light footsteps on the rungs of the metal stairway, as she ran down towards him. He could hardly believe how she looked, in a white ballgown, her hair flowing and framing her face, her eyes alive and sparkling as she gave him a mock curtsy, then pirouetted for his inspection. He wanted to tell her that he loved her, and couldn’t live without her; that she looked like some princess in every child’s favourite fairytale.

  But he said none of this. He stammered that she looked ‘goot’.

  He hoped it had not been difficult or inconvenient to leave the ballroom. He was most grateful for her company on the voyage, and hoped he had not been a nuisance. Then he stood, feeling miserable, hopelessly tongue-tied and inadequate.

  She took his hand.

  ‘You goose,’ she said softly, ‘stop it.’

  ‘Stop what?’

  ‘Being so polite.’

  ‘You don’t wish me to be polite?’

  ‘I wish,’ she said mocking his formality, ‘that you ask me to dance.’

  ‘Here, on the deck?’

  ‘Please,’ she said, and held out her arms to him.

  They began to dance. Above, in the lantern-lit salon, the ship’s orchestra was playing the lively strains of a polka. They did not dance to this music. They moved to their ‘own beat, to a slow romantic rhythm that only they could hear. Their bodies swayed in perfect step. And then Stefan stopped dancing, and held her close to him.

  ‘I love you,’ he said.

  ‘Yes,’ she whispered. ‘Yes, my darling Stefan.’

  She leant forward and kissed him on the mouth. They clung together. They were oblivious to anything else, until above them, from the salon, the figure of a ship’s officer and an anxious woman appeared and looked down at the embracing couple.

  ‘Elizabeth!’ Edith Patterson said, in shocked disbelief.

  ‘I’ll take care of it,’ the officer said. He clattered down the metal companionway.

  ‘Are you travelling first class?’ he asked Stefan aggressively.

  ‘I think you know I’m not.’

  ‘Then get down to the dregs where you belong.’

  ‘Please don’t speak to him like that,’ Elizabeth said.

  The Second Officer, whose advances she had rebuffed at least twice, had his moment of retaliation.

  ‘You’v
e upset your mother, Miss, and you ought to apologise to her. You’ve behaved most improperly.’ He turned to Stefan. ‘And you get off this deck at once.’

  ‘When I have said goodbye,’ Stefan said, and paying no further attention to the officer, he took Elizabeth’s hand. ‘I’m sorry, Liebchen.’

  She gazed at him, as if the ship’s officer did not exist. ‘There’s only one thing I’m sorry about,’ she said, ‘I’m sorry it’s over. I love you.’ She gently kissed him on the lips again, then turned and started reluctantly up the steps.

  ‘Little slut.’

  The remark was deliberately loud enough for them both to hear. For the first time in his life Stefan lashed out and hit someone with intent to do him serious bodily harm. The officer staggered and fell backwards, clutching his nose as blood started to flow from it.

  Elizabeth turned and saw this and then watched Stefan make his way down towards the lower deck. She wanted to follow and beg him not to go to his family in faraway Adelaide; she wanted to hold him and feel his arms tight around her. Instead, she walked up to the boat deck, to meet the gaze of her mother’s outrage.

  It was later, in their luxury stateroom with its adjoining cabins that the recriminations flew.

  ‘You’ve been seeing him the entire voyage. Deceiving me.’

  ‘I did nothing I’m ashamed of, Mama.’

  There was no question of their returning to the Captain’s farewell dance, nor did either of them wish to do so.

  ‘He’s a nobody — a penniless foreigner.’

  ‘That’s not true,’ Elizabeth declared, close to angry tears. ‘His family have a property in South Australia. A vineyard. His relatives in Bavaria told him that they’re quite wealthy.’

  ‘Nonsense. People like him make up fanciful stories for silly girls like you. If they’re well off, why is he travelling steerage?’

  ‘Because his uncle only sent him a cheap fare. He wrote to say that was how he came to Australia, and that Stefan had to do the same. And I don’t in the least care how he’s travelling,’ she said passionately. ‘I love him.’