“I will never forgive you for this!” cried Alicia. “How dare you? How dare you?”
“Oh, go bite your bum!” said Missy, and laughed. “It’s big enough,” she added, and departed.
This was the proverbial last straw; Alicia stiffened until she became utterly rigid, gave a gurgling moaning shriek, and fell over with a crash to join her mother on the floor.
Oh, how satisfying that had been! But as she walked away down the gradual hill of George Street that led into the main thoroughfare of Byron, Missy’s elation faded. Compared to the topic under discussion during her first and unnoticed tenure of the drawing room, the presentation of Alicia’s violated clothing was picayune. Those poor women! Missy knew as little about the world of company business as her mother and aunts, but she was fully intelligent enough to have caught the drift of Sir William’s words. She even knew of the shares, for Drusilla kept hers and Octavia’s both in the small tin cash-box that lay inside her wardrobe and held things like the deeds to her house and five acres of land. Ten shares each, twenty shares altogether. Which meant that Aunt Cornelia and Aunt Julia probably had ten shares each as well. Dividend. That was obviously some sort of periodic payment, a share in the company’s profits.
How very despicable most of her male relations were! Sir William, eager to keep that disgraceful policy of the first Sir William’s going, so that the hapless female members of his family who pinched and scraped in grinding but genteel poverty should have none of the fruits that accrued from the bottling of what was, after all, in God’s gift rather than in any Hurlingford’s. Uncle Maxwell, who was the worst kind of thief, rich in his own right, yet stealing the eggs and butter and orchardings of his poor relations because he had bullied them into believing that to sell elsewhere would be an unforgivable act of disloyalty. Uncle Herbert, who had bought up many of those houses on five acres in his time, always for a great deal less than they were worth, being the same kind of bully as his brother Maxwell. Only he was worse, because he stole back the little he paid out as well, by telling his victims that the investment schemes designed to make that little a little more had failed.
Not only the male relations were despicable, Missy amended, in a mood to dish out criticisms fairly. If the Aurelias and Augustas and Antonias had brought pressure to bear, having married on the inside of the clan fortunes, maybe they might have succeeded in changing things, for the worst bully is vulnerable to being bullied by his wife.
Well, something must be done. But what? Missy debated carrying her tale home, then decided she would not be believed, or if believed, that her mother and aunts would still end in being bullied out of their just due. Something had to be done, and done soon, before Alicia came smarming round to secure the shares, as secure them she undoubtedly would.
The library was open today; Missy glanced through the window expecting to see Aunt Livilla’s grim form behind the desk, but there instead was Una. So she slowed down, turned round, and backtracked.
“Missy! What a treat! I didn’t expect to see you today, darling,” said Una, smiling as if she really did think it a treat to see the family trollop cum scragbag.
“I’m so angry!” cried Missy, and sat down on the hard chair provided for browsers, fanning herself with her hand.
“What’s the matter?”
Suddenly realising she couldn’t possibly expose that small clutch of close blood-relations to the contempt of a person as remotely connected to the Byron arm of the clan as Una, she had to compromise with a lame, “Oh, nothing.”
Una didn’t attempt to probe. She just nodded and smiled, that lovely radiance emanating from skin and hair and nails subtly soothing rage.
“How about a cup of tea before the long hike home?” she asked, getting up.
A cup of tea assumed the proportions of a life-giving elixir; “Yes, please!” said Missy with fervour.
Una disappeared behind the last bookshelf at the back of the room, where in a small cubicle there lay facilities for making tea; there was no toilet, the norm in Byron shops, for everyone was expected to use the toilets in the Byron Waters Baths, and be quick about it.
To investigate the novels while she waited seemed like a good idea to Missy, so she moved to the back of the room and inched along the shelf that came hard up against the edge of Aunt Livilla’s desk. And her eye in moving sideways round the desk to where the shelf continued on its far side encountered a familiar-looking sheaf of papers lying there. A packet of share certificates in the Byron Bottle Company.
Una emerged. “Kettle’s on, but it takes time to boil from scratch on a spirit stove.” Her eyes followed Missy’s, then came to rest on Missy’s face. “Isn’t it lovely?” she asked.
“What?”
“The money that’s being offered for Byron Bottle Company shares, of course. Ten pounds a pop! Unheard of! Wallace had a few shares of mine, you know, and when we separated he gave them back to me – said he didn’t want anything that reminded him of the Hurlingfords. I only have ten shares, but I can definitely use a hundred quid at the moment, darling. And just between you and me, Auntie Livvie is a bit on the short side too, so I’ve persuaded her to give me her twenty shares to sell while I’m selling mine.”
“How did Aunt Livilla manage to acquire shares?”
“Richard gave them to her when he couldn’t pay her back in cash the time he needed money so desperately he actually borrowed from her. Poor Richard! He never can bet on the right horses. And she’s such a stickler for repayment of loans, even when it’s her only beloved son on the borrowing end. So he signed over a few of his shares in the Byron Bottle Company to her, and that shut her up.”
“Has he got more?”
“Naturally. He’s a male Hurlingford, darling. But I do believe he may have sold out completely, because it was Richard put me onto this godsend of a buyer.”
“How can you sell someone else’s shares?”
“With a Power of Attorney. See?” Una held up a stiff foolscap form. “You get it at the stationer’s, like a will form. And you fill it out with the details, and you sign it, and whoever is giving you permission to act on her behalf signs it, and someone signs it as a witness.”
“I see,” said Missy, forgetting all about perusing the novels. She sat down again. “Una, do you have an address for whoever is buying Byron Bottle shares?”
“Right here, darling, though I’m taking the whole kit and kaboodle down to Sydney in person on Monday to sell them, it’s safer. That’s why I’m minding the library today, so I can have Monday off.” She got up and went back to make the tea.
Missy thought hard. Why couldn’t she, Missy, have a try at getting hold of the aunts’ certificates before Alicia came asking for them? Why should Alicia fill her with defeat when in their sole clash just concluded, Alicia had been the loser?
By the time Una came back with the tea tray, Missy had made up her mind.
“Oh, thank you.” She took her cup gratefully. “Una, is it imperative that you go to Sydney on Monday? Could you possibly make it Tuesday instead?”
“I don’t see why not.”
“I have an appointment with a Macquarie Street specialist next Tuesday morning,” Missy explained carefully. “I was going with Alicia, but... I don’t think she’s going to want my company, somehow. It’s possible I may have some of these shares to sell, and if I could go with you, it would be easier. I’ve only been to Sydney a couple of times when I was a child, so I don’t know the place.”
“Oh, what fun! Tuesday it is.” Una fairly glittered, so bright had the light in her become.
“I’ll have to ask you for another favour, I’m afraid.”
“Of course, darling. What?”
“Would you mind going next door to the stationer’s and buying me four of these Power of Attorney forms? You see, if I go myself, Uncle Septimus is sure to want to know what I need Power of Attorney forms for, and the next thing he’ll mention it to Uncle Billy, or Uncle Maxwell, or Uncle Herbert, and – well, I
’d rather keep my business to myself.”
“I’ll go the minute I finish my cup of tea, while you’re here to mind the shop for me.”
And so it was arranged, including Una’s driving out to Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon at five o’clock to witness the signing of the forms. Luckily this time Missy had her own little money-purse with her, and luckily it contained two shillings; the forms were expensive, at threepence each.
“Thank you,” said Missy, stowing the rolled-up forms in her shopping bag.
She had decided upon some books as well.
“Good lord!” exclaimed Una, glancing at the titles. “Are you sure you want The Troubled Heart? I thought you said you read it to death all last week.”
“I did. But I still want to read it again.” And into the bag alongside the forms went The Troubled Heart.
“I’ll see you at Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon, and don’t worry, Auntie Livvie never minds lending me her horse and sulky,” said Una, accompanying Missy to the door, where she deposited a light kiss on Missy’s unaccustomed cheek. “Chin up, girl, you can do it,” she said, and pushed Missy out into the street.
“Mother,” said Missy that evening as she sat in the warmth of the kitchen with Drusilla and Octavia, “have you still got those Byron Bottle shares Grandfather left you and Aunt Octavia in his will?”
Drusilla looked up from her beading warily; though the altered pecking-order was of her own making, she still found it a little difficult to accept the fact that she was no longer the boss-chook. And she had learned very quickly to spot the more subtle, oblique approach Missy employed, so that she knew something was in the wind now.
“Yes, I’ve still got them,” she said.
Missy put her tatting in her lap and looked across at her mother very seriously. “Mother, do you trust me?”
Drusilla blinked. “Of course I do!”
“How much is a new Singer sewing machine?”
“I don’t honestly know, but I imagine at least twenty or thirty pounds, perhaps a great deal more.”
“If you had yet another hundred pounds besides the two hundred pounds Aunt Aurelia paid for Alicia’s linens, would you buy yourself a Singer sewing machine?”
“I would certainly be tempted.”
“Then give me your shares in Byron Bottle and let me sell them for you. I can get you ten pounds a share in Sydney.”
Both Drusilla and Octavia had ceased working.
“Missy dear, they’re worthless,” said Octavia gently.
“No, they are not worthless,” said Missy. “You’ve been duped by Uncle Billy and Uncle Herbert and the rest, is all. You should have been paid what’s called a dividend upon them every so often, because the Byron Bottle Company is an extremely prosperous concern.”
“No, you’re wrong!” insisted Octavia, shaking her head.
“I’m right. If you two and Aunt Cornelia and Aunt Julia had only taken yourselves off to a disinterested solicitor in Sydney years ago, you might be a lot richer today than you are, and that’s the truth.”
“We could never go behind the menfolk’s back, Missy,” said Octavia. “It would be a breach of faith and trust in them. They know better than we do, which is why they look after us and watch out for us. And they’re family!”
“Don’t I know it?” cried Missy from behind clenched teeth. “Aunt Octavia, your menfolk have been trading on the fact that they’re family ever since the Hurlingfords began! They use you! They exploit you! When have we ever got a fair price from Uncle Maxwell for our produce? Do you honestly swallow all those hard-luck stories of his about being done down in the markets himself, so how can he afford to pay us more? He’s as rich as Croesus! And when have you ever seen proof that Uncle Herbert actually did lose your money in an unlucky investment? He’s richer than Croesus! And didn’t Uncle Billy tell you in person that those shares were worthless?”
The fixity of Drusilla’s silent regard had passed from shock to doubt, from unwillingness to listen to a distinct desire to hear more. And by the end of this impassioned speech, even Octavia was visibly wavering. Perhaps had it been the old Missy sitting there destroying the old order, they might have dismissed what she said without a qualm; but this new Missy possessed an authority which lent her words the ring of unequivocal truth.
“Look,” Missy went on more quietly, “I can sell your shares in the Byron Bottle Company for ten pounds each, and I know that kind of opportunity is as rare as hen’s teeth, because I was there when Uncle Billy and Uncle Edmund were talking about it, and that’s what they said. They didn’t know I was listening, otherwise they’d not have said a word of it. They spoke of you as they think of you, with utter contempt. Believe me, I did not misinterpret what I heard, and I do not exaggerate. And I made up my mind that there was going to be an end to it, that I was going to see that you and Aunt Cornelia and Aunt Julia got the better of them for once. So give me your shares and let me sell them for you, because I’ll get you ten pounds each for them. But if you offer them to Uncle Billy or Uncle Herbert or Uncle Maxwell, they’ll bully you into signing them away for nothing.”
Drusilla sighed. “I wish I didn’t believe you, Missy, but I do. And what you say comes as no surprise, deep down.”
Octavia, who might have battled on in blind loyalty, instead decided to switch allegiances; for she was a little bit of a child, and craved firm direction.
“Think what a difference a Singer sewing machine would make to you, Drusilla,” she said.
“I would enjoy it,” admitted Drusilla.
“And I must confess I would enjoy having a hundred pounds all of my own in the bank. I would feel less of a burden.”
Drusilla capitulated. “Very well, then, Missy, you may have our shares to sell.”
“I want Aunt Cornelia’s and Aunt Julia’s as well!”
“I see.”
“I can sell their shares for the same amount of money, ten pounds each. But like you, they must be prepared to give me their shares without one word to Uncle Billy or any of the others – not one word!”
“Cornelia could certainly do with the money, Drusilla,” said Octavia, feeling more cheerful every moment, and consigning her male relatives to limbo because it was better to do that than grieve over their perfidy, bleed from their hurtfulness. “She could afford to have her feet done by that German bone specialist in Sydney. She does so much standing! And you know how desperate Julia’s case is, now that the Olympus Café has put in that extra room out the back, with marble-topped tables and a pianist every afternoon. If she had an extra hundred pounds, she could afford to make her tea room even swankier than the Olympus Café.”
“I’ll do my best to talk them into it,” said Drusilla.
“Well, if you do talk them into it, they have to be here at Missalonghi on Sunday afternoon at five o’clock, with their shares. All of you will have to sign a Power of Attorney.”
“What’s that?”
“A piece of paper that authorises me to act in your name.”
“Why at five o’clock on Sunday?” asked Octavia.
“Because that’s when my friend Una is coming to witness the signing of the documents.”
“Oh, how nice!” Inspiration struck Octavia. “I shall bake her a batch of my plain biscuits.”
Missy grinned. “For once in our lives, Aunt Octavia, I think we can treat ourselves to a slap-up Sunday high tea. We can have plain biscuits for Una, of course, but we’ll have fairy cakes and melting moments and cream puffs iced with toffee, and – lamingtons!”
No one gave her any argument about that menu.
When Missy arrived at the Byron railway station at six o’clock on Tuesday morning, she carried forty shares in the Byron Bottle Company, and four duly signed and witnessed Powers of Attorney. Una, it turned out, was a proper Justice of the Peace in spite of her sex (she said it happened in Sydney from time to time), and had fixed a most official-looking seal to the documents.
She was waiting on the platfo
rm, and so was Alicia. Not together, for Alicia was at the engine end, where the first class carriages would stand, and Una was at the guard’s van end, where the second class carriages would stand.
“I hope you don’t mind travelling second class,” said Missy anxiously. “Mother has been most generous, I have ten shillings for my expenses and a guinea for the specialist, but I don’t want to spend any more of it than I can help.”
“Darling, my first class days are long over,” soothed Una. “Besides, it’s not a terribly long journey, and at this time of a cold morning, no one is going to insist that the windows be opened to let in the soot.”
Missy’s eyes encountered Alicia’s; Alicia sniffed and deliberately turned the other way. Thank heavens for that, thought Missy unrepentantly.
The rails began to hum, and shortly afterwards the train came in, a huge black monster of an engine with a stubby stack clunking past in torrents of grimy smoke and fierce gushes of thick white steam.
“Do you know what I like to do?” asked Una of Missy as they found themselves a couple of vacant seats, one a window.
“No, what?”
“You know the overhead bridge at the bit of Noel Street near the bottling plant?”
“I do indeed.”
“I love to stand right in the middle on top of it, and hang over the edge of the parapet when a train goes underneath. Whoosh! Smoke everywhere, just like descending to hell. But oh, such fun!”
And so are you fun, thought Missy. I’ve never met anyone like you, nor anyone so full of life.
By the time the train drew into its terminus at Central Station, the hands of the platform clock said twenty minutes to nine. Her appointment in Macquarie Street was for ten, but Una said that left them plenty of time for a cup of tea in the railway refreshment rooms. Alicia swept by them in the main concourse; she must have been lurking in wait just to do it, for the first class passengers were normally well ahead of those at the back of the train.
“Isn’t that the famous Alicia Marshall?” asked Una.
“Yes.”
Una made an untranslatable sound.