Under The Harvest Moon. Gary Blinco
different hotels, or sometimes in a rough camp in their tent. When she was old enough to go to school, she still enjoyed the country visits during the school holidays. While her classmates headed off to the seaside, she went with her parents in the big brown van, pedalling her father’s goods to the bush towns and farms. She did not envy her friends at all. She loved touring about the country with her parents.
She thought of how different, how brief, her life would have been if she had joined her parents on that last trip. But her final senior exams were looming and she had stayed in the city with friends. To keep the trip short and to ensure they would be back for Veronica’s graduation from high school, her father’s employer arranged for him to do his rounds in a chartered aircraft. He had been a pilot during the war and he was an accomplished aviator. That was why it had come as such a shock to learn that the plane had crashed in a storm near Goondiwindi, in the west of the state, killing both her parents instantly.
Had it not been for her and her exams, they would have done the rounds in the van as usual. She still carried an unreasonable burden of guilt over the accident; she was like that by nature, often blaming herself unfairly, feeling responsible for someone, or feeling their pain more intensely than they felt it themselves.
Suddenly she was seventeen years old and alone in the world. She was beautiful, and like many truly beautiful women, she seemed unconscious of the power of her beauty. She was aware of her looks, but she did not flaunt them, never allowing the constant stream of praise from people to turn her head. Apart from her beauty Veronica had also been academically brilliant at school. Her study record and her bright personality endeared her to people, and she was soon able to find work in a bank, a coveted occupation at the time.
Refusing any help from charitable well-wishers, she remained in the small cottage where her family had lived for years. She wanted to surround herself with the furniture and household items that her parents had accumulated; the presence of these familiar things seemed to soften the blow of her loss, cushioning her grief. Her father’s estate was not large by the Symons’s standards, but she was far from being destitute.
Her father was only in his late thirties when he died and he had not gathered too many material possessions. Perhaps the war had something to do with his lack of wealth as well; one did not grow rich on the five bob a day that was paid to servicemen during the war. She was, however, happy with the inheritance. The personal items would always remind her of her parents and the love they had shared, and there was quite a tidy sum of money as well to see her started on the rest of her life.
Her father had saved 400 pounds towards the farm he longed to own. He often talked about how he needed 500 quid to qualify for a soldier’s grant of land. She had cried when she saw how close he had come to his goal. He also had some life insurance valued at about 500 pounds. All things considered, she was quite well off.
She had met the man who was now her husband, Derwent Byrne, when she was sixteen. He was not the academic type and had dropped out of school early, largely because his domineering father wanted his son as cheap labour on his small farm. But Derwent had resisted the will of his father, finding work in a local factory instead, and living anywhere he could find a bed whenever his father flew into a rage and ordered him off the farm.
Derwent kept contact with his ex-fellow pupils as he belonged to a band that frequently played the music of the day for high school dances. She had been attracted to his dark good looks at once. When she went out with him and found that he did not appear shallow like other boys she had dated, she was sure she was in love.
He had not seemed to be sexually aggressive like the others either; he seemed gentle, even shy when they were alone together. He was happy to sit on the verandah of the cottage after dinner and play his guitar, singing in his clear sweet voice. Her father had approved of Derwent as well, an important consideration for Veronica. Her father was her hero and mentor. If he approved of anything, then it also gained her approval as well.
Derwent became as one of the family, spending most of his free time at Veronica’s house. He rode an old beaten up motorcycle and worked as a labourer at the local brick factory, and this rough persona somehow added to his appeal. She became the envy of her friends because of Derwent. His slightly outsider status made him very popular with everyone, especially the females. Somehow the popularity seemed almost lost on him. He only had eyes for Veronica.
When her parents were killed Derwent asked her to marry him and she never considered if love or sympathy had motivated him because she had always assumed they would marry one day. She accepted without hesitation, although she was only just over seventeen and he was twenty-one. Most people married quite young then, so nobody thought much of their liaison. Derwent moved into the cottage on their wedding night. He could not get time off from his job for a traditional honeymoon and she was committed to the bank, at least until her father’s estate was finalised.
The wedding had been very small, just Derwent’s surly and reluctant parents, a few of his relatives and some of her school chums. Derwent’s family was large, though most of his siblings had grown up and left home to escape the clutches of their father. To Veronica’s surprise, the family was not close as she expected a large family to be; perhaps the poverty stricken life they had lived under the stern hand of the father had set them apart. Derwent’s father was a simple but demanding man; and he liked to smoke and drink, indulging his habits at the expense of his wife and children who lived in almost primitive conditions on their small farm.
In the end Derwent lived intermittently on the family farm, depending on how well he was getting on with his father at any particular time, and then only to please his rather oppressed and unhappy mother. It seemed to Veronica that Derwent was keen to get away from his parents, and that they were just as keen to see him gone. He clearly loved his mother and she him, but his continued presence led to unpleasant, and sometimes, violent scenes between son and father; with his mother always caught in the middle.
Veronica’s parents were English by birth, and there never seemed to be any relatives on her side living in Australia at all, or if there were she had never met them. Now, apart from Derwent, she had no family of her own, and she could never envisage becoming a close part of his. They treated her with the same studious indifference as they did their own offspring.
Their honeymoon night had been wonderful she remembered. Derwent seemed so shy and uncertain as they climbed into bed, his lack of confidence somehow adding to her own. She eventually had to lead him a little, although she had no previous experience of sex. When they finally got started he became insatiable, leaving her alone only after she protested that she was too sore to continue. He relented then and fell asleep in her arms. She lay awake stroking his dark locks, feeling happy but confused with this new intimate arrangement. The emptiness of the cottage suddenly seemed reduced; she had a new family now and she drifted off to sleep smiling with pleasure as she contemplated her new life.
The first few months were very special and she felt fulfilled in every sense, in her work at the bank and in her personal life with Derwent. He seemed to want her constantly, carrying her to the bedroom as soon as he came home from the brick factory, not even waiting to shower first, sometimes not even bothering to carry her to the bedroom, taking her in the kitchen or on the lounge room floor. It was exciting at first, but she felt that she needed more time to become aroused and that he was not aware of, or sensitive to, her needs. She felt sometimes that he was driven by some insatiable inner need for love and this frightened her. She began to reject his advances, asking him to be gentler, more romantic. He retreated into silence, becoming sullen and withdrawn. He saw her requests as an attempt to take control of and direct their lovemaking, which undermined his fragile grip on his manhood.
As the months passed he seemed almost to lose interest in her, as if he had gorged himself on her in the beginning and now was faintly repulsed by her. She began to wonder if he had somehow, perhaps unconsciously, inherited his father’s mood and manner, that it was true after all that a man modelled himself on his father. Derwent had never been a drinker, but he began to arrive home late in the evenings, often a little the worse for