“That’s shrewd, Tufty.” Edda shrugged. “Well, I for one refuse to interfere. I’m just sorry for Charlie.”
Though Corunda wasn’t to know it, the Great Depression moved faster than Charlie Burdum’s siege of Kitty Latimer. He hadn’t yet found the courage to kiss her lips when a few Sydney-based shops closed and threw a few more Corunda residents out of a job minus severance pay or benefits of any kind. Nor could the local unemployed find new work; no one was hiring, even the hospital. The federal government announced that a million pounds would be given to the states to dole out to unemployed men, then left it to each state to cut up its portion as it saw fit, as well as distribute the money. This led to municipal fiddling and furious outcries availing no one. South Australia, shockingly beset, was gifted disproportionately because of it, which provoked no anger. However, Western Australia was also disproportionately gifted for a less well-founded reason: the state wanted badly to secede from the Commonwealth, so Canberra deliberately wooed its government with an unduly large portion; Canberra was determined to keep the whole continent within the Commonwealth.
“Two hundred and seventy-six thousand pounds is a lot of money,” Kitty said to Charles over a cup of tea in the cottage, “and I imagine that Sydney will get most of it. But will Corunda get any at all?”
“Probably not. Joblessness is low here compared to other country districts, even with the recent closures. No job — what a Christmas present!”
“Father is concentrating on the orphanage. He seems to feel it will inherit child victims of this horrible crisis. But surely no one will take a child from its mother?”
“Suicide, Kitty. It’s risen appallingly among men, now some women are taking their lives too. Besides, some mothers feel that if they abandon their children, their children will at least be fed, clothed and sheltered in an orphanage.”
Kitty shivered. “How cruel the world can be!” Her eyes went to his in anxious query. “I can’t bear to talk about mothers deciding to abandon their children, but the subject has given me a little courage. Charlie, don’t you carry any pain?”
He stared at her in genuine astonishment. “Pain? Why?”
“From your childhood? Not having a mother and father?” Her voice sank to a whisper. “Being — different from the rest?”
His laughter was too spontaneous to doubt. “Oh, Kitty, what a romantic you are! How could I miss two people I never knew? My childhood was splendid, honestly. My aunt and uncle — she was my mother’s sister — brought me up to want for nothing. Nothing, Kitty, absolutely nothing! I was loved and well treated.”
“But surely your differences?” she persisted, unconvinced.
“My want of height, you imply?”
“Yes, and anything else that gave you pain.”
He shifted his chair and took her hands in his, which felt warm, dry, strong. “My uncle was shorter than I, and brought me up to regard lack of height as a challenge, not a cross to bear. I vindicated his faith and his trust in me — what more can I say? As to pain — romantic twaddle! Greek tragedies aren’t rooted in the physical, but in human nature. I am Charles Henry Burdum, and one day I’ll be Sir Charles. Women may get a kick out of high drama, it’s permissible for women. But not for men. There was no pain as you mean it. I simply rose to combat challenges.”
“I don’t see it,” she said. “Not to suffer is inhuman.”
“Nonsense!” he snapped, tired of this conversation. “What would be inhuman would be to feel no sorrow, no grief, no fear. I’ve soaked my pillow with tears over a dead dog, to this very day grieve at the deaths of my aunt and uncle, and I can assure you that when a thug pointed a revolver at my chest one day, I knew fear.” The eyes, gone bronze, looked at her with puzzlement. “You’ve been a nurse for three and a half years now, my dear, and I have reason to believe you’re a very good one. Children are your great love — in which case, why aren’t you having your own rather than peering at them through a cloudy window?”
Her breath caught, she stiffened. How brilliantly he could do that, snatch the advantage away from her and use it to crush her! Her quest for his pain derided and belittled, she stared at him in wonder.
“Yes, you’re right,” she said slowly. “It is a nonsense.”
The charm flashed to the surface, together with a wonderful smile. “I’m very sorry,” he said gently, “I didn’t mean to cut you down so brutally. Oh, but you ask for it! If I had my wishes, I’d choose a soft wooing, full of tenderness and kindness, but you have an unerring instinct for the kill that makes you turn in the doorway of your boudoir and transform like lightning from the world’s most seductive woman into a hissing, snarling wildcat. Every time you do it, I have to tame the wildcat all over again, and I am not by nature a hunter.” The face changed, became ugly. “What I have to think about, I now understand, is whether I love you enough to put up with more of this. Frankly, I don’t know.”
“Perhaps,” she said, “it’s that I sense Corunda is too small for you, that you’ll move on, and I don’t want to live anywhere in the world except Corunda.”
“I do have grand ambitions,” he conceded, “but it isn’t necessary to leave Corunda to achieve them. I want to enter the political arena, preferably on a federal level, and Corunda is perfect for that. It’s a mere two-hour drive from Canberra.”
Her face lightened. “I see! Yes, that makes sense.”
“So if you married me, my darling Kitty, there would be no need to give up Corunda.”
Her eye fell on the clock; she jumped. “I’m late!”
“I’ll walk you to Children’s, then no one can object.”
Even so, he left it until the very last moment to ask her if she would have dinner with him. As always, she accepted.
Kitty didn’t like to ask if the chef was still in the Burdum House kitchen, since dinner was meatloaf with gravy and mashed potatoes, but she suspected he was, since the meatloaf was minced lamb with a touch of cumin and no tendency to crumble, the gravy tasted like a sauce, and the mashed potatoes were pureed. She sent the potatoes back as too sloppy, not buttery enough, and devoid of pepper. Charles considered he did well to get two out of three correct, and had asked the chef to have fried potatoes in reserve. Since the chef was an Australian despite his Cordon Bleu training, he was seriously considering asking Con Decopoulos at the Parthenon if the man could observe Corunda-style cuisine.
“I liked the meatloaf,” she said artlessly over coffee in the sitting room. “It was a little springy in texture, and it didn’t break into chunks. Whatever it was flavoured with has a delicious taste, but why turn good old spuds into milky mush?”
“If you marry me, I’ll probably lose my chef,” he said.
“Definitely! There are heaps of women in this town who can cook brilliantly, according to the natives. For, Charlie, if I marry you, we eat Corunda food, not bleeding meat and milky mush. And on that point there is absolutely no negotiation.”
“You actually said, if!”
“So I did. If, not yes.”
“It’s a huge leap forward. You must love me a little.”
“Love isn’t really the stumbling block. Do I like you?”
“Let me kiss you,” he said, coming to kneel before her. “Liking can only come from a degree of ease and companionship you won’t permit, and that’s my fault for telling you I loved you before I so much as knew your name. I’m not sure I like you, for that matter. What I do know is that we’re destined to marry and spend our lives together. Here in Corunda, eating Corunda food. Let your guard down, please! Don’t turn at the boudoir door and become a wildcat. Until you let your guard down, we rotate around each other on a fixed orbit.”
She smiled. “You follow the ninth planet debate.”
“I believe in the laws of Nature, and I also believe that human beings are a part of Nature,” he said seriously.
Kitty leaned forward. “Kiss me, Charlie.”
Her first consciousness of him was his smell, finding it h
eady, unexpected: some very expensive soap, a smooth and boyish tang, no hint of sweat. His embrace was enveloping but not alarming, for he had pushed her knees together off to his left, meaning he couldn’t grind his groin against her; nor did he when he stood up and brought her with him. She hadn’t realised how comfortable it would be to stand at much the same height as his; no stretching and straining. Either he was clever, or his respect was genuine, for he kept his hands above her waist at her back. Oh, Charlie, why do you always have two faces? Lucifer one moment, Satan the next. But both aspects of the Lord of Hell.
He didn’t fumble his way across her cheek to her mouth, he hovered near enough to make her close her eyes by reflex, then put his lips on hers slightly at an angle, their pressure feather-light, their skin silky. Oh, yes, it was nice! Her body relaxed, nothing thus far having repelled her, especially a thrusting dominance that would have had her breaking free in a second. As if he were content to leave the response to her in her own time, a highly seductive lure for Kitty. When she parted her lips a little, he followed; her arms crept up around his neck.
The kiss went on as if she floated unanchored in a space of air and light until his left hand moved from her back to her side and sank into her flesh so suddenly that, against all reason, her body arched on a moan and fitted itself against him. In the same moment the kiss changed, deepened, became a turmoil of dark and velvety emotions that had her as much his prey as he was hers.
Then she was free; Charles was on the other side of the room, turned away from her and gazing out a window.
“Time to go home,” he said after what seemed a long while. She found her gloves and purse and walked out ahead of him.
Grace didn’t look at all surprised when Kitty confided in her the next morning.
“Well, you love him, so what are you waiting for?” Grace asked, giving a bowl of green jelly to Brian, then popping the teat of a bottle in John’s mouth.
“Why do children love jelly so much?” Kitty asked. “It costs a tenth what baked custard does and has no nourishment except sugar to rot their teeth, but kiddies grab for the jelly and turn their noses up at the baked custard. Insane!”
The mother looked at the children’s nurse in scorn. “Honestly, Kits, sometimes you’re plain thick! Jelly is sensuous, it’s cool rather than cloying — kiddies prefer cool to cloying — and they adore sucking it through their teeth, feel it melt on the tongue. Besides which, the sun shines through jelly yet it’s brightly coloured. And don’t try to change the subject, which is whether you intend to marry Charlie Burdum or not. I say, stop all this maidenly quivering and do it.”
Kitty departed feeling she had learned more about jelly than marriage — which had its funny side, but didn’t help. The one thing she didn’t doubt was that Charlie loved her; what she doubted was whether she loved him, and nothing so far had given her the utter conviction that she couldn’t live without him. Grace felt it for Bear, and it sustained silly Grace through all her mistakes.
The kiss had opened Kitty’s eyes to pleasures she hadn’t experienced when other men had kissed her, and seemed to promise the kind of lover a woman yearned for.
But there was far more to marriage than that, and her father’s plight preyed on her. Never once had Daddy spoken of it, but it was there for his daughters to see and sorrow about. A quarter of a century irrevocably tied to a woman he couldn’t esteem, whose actions often embarrassed or shamed him, without once coming into the open and admitting it was the unhappiest of unions. To Daddy, his vows were sacred, and could she enter into her marriage on less demanding terms than his? It wasn’t a simple question of weakness, it was a horror of taking those vows and waking up to find herself plighted to a man whose charm and outward qualities had fooled her.
If he hadn’t been rich, if he didn’t have the signs of success written all over him, if he wasn’t so self-confident, so sure his was the right way… What was it about him that set her back up?
And she was tiring, flagging. Why Kitty felt so strongly that she was fighting for her right to life, she didn’t know, save that Charlie was a millstone grinding her into submission, the hunter out to cage his wildcat — she, who wasn’t wild or catlike or domineering!
Then Grace invited her to morning tea on her new verandah, with Edda and Tufts to round out the celebration.
“Isn’t it wonderful?” she asked, leading her sisters into it with delighted pride. “Bear and Jack did it for my birthday.”
What had been a bare verandah was now a glassed-in place of white-painted cane chairs and innumerable pot plants from lush ferns to begonias in full bloom and tubs of Kentia palm trees.
“It faces south, so it never gets direct sun,” Grace continued amid sounds of awed approval, “and Bear found a piece of workshop roof glass at the railway yards. Jack helped him fit it into the verandah roof so that the plants get light strong enough to flower. I love it!” She sat in a big planter’s chair looking queenly.
“You do have good taste, Grace,” said Edda affectionately. “Inside its walls, your house is out of the ordinary.”
“Sit down, all of you,” Grace said in a commanding voice. “Before we split into gaggles to make the tea, I want us to talk about Kitty’s dilemma.”
“What is holding you back, Kits?” Tufts asked, sitting.
“The fear of losing my own identity, I think,” Kitty said. “How can I explain a feeling, a presentiment?”
“Do you doubt that Charlie loves you?” Grace asked.
“No, not for a second.” She sat foward in her white chair, her eyes pleading for their patience and tolerance. “I suppose my fears are based in what I don’t know about how Charlie’s mind works — no, not that! It’s a fear that what I call love isn’t what Charlie means by it. Am I a human being, or property?”
“A human being,” Tufts said instantly.
The others nodded emphatically.
“Kitty, Charlie would never choose a bride the way a man who collects Russian icons would choose another one,” Edda said. “He looked at you and loved you without knowing a single thing about you — I call that choosing with the soul. If I ever met a man who felt like that about me, I might change my mind and marry him.” She grinned. “Chemistry rather than biology.”
“You’re no help,” said Kitty.
“As the only expert in the field,” said Grace in superior tones, “I can at least offer you this pearl of wisdom, Kitty. Marriage is never what you imagined. It’s a joining, and I don’t mean that in a physical sense. Both the partners in it wake up married to a stranger — how can it be otherwise? They pool their ideas, dreams, money, minds as well as hearts. I made terrible mistakes early on, mostly thanks to ignorance and listening to the wrong advice. Because there’s more than self involved. If you can’t put Charlie ahead of yourself, you shouldn’t marry him.”
Edda was staring at her full twin in surprise. “My word, Grace, you have learned!” She turned to Kitty. “Dearest baby sister, none of us can make up your mind for you. That, you must do for yourself. But no matter what you decide, and no matter how things fall out, we’ll be here for you.”
The tears rolled down Kitty’s cheeks. “Thank you, that’s as much as I’ll ever need,” she whispered.
Grace gave her a lacy handkerchief. “What colour do you want your bridesmaids to wear?” she asked briskly.
Brian chose that moment to invade his mother’s party, both arms wrapped around his brother, who was getting too heavy for him to carry, though he refused to admit it.
They were, thought Edda, the most fetching little chaps, each owning a sweet disposition that would always be there. Flaxen-blond like their father, appealing little faces, both with widely set, pale blue eyes. Hardly anything of Grace.
Gazing at them, Edda spoke. “Kitty, life never meant you to be a children’s nurse. Your life means you to have children of your own! Darling heart, you should have a tribe of them! In you I see about as perfect a mother as mothers come — sensible, ha
rd when you have to be hard and soft when you have to be soft, the fount of love, warmth, security. Think of that too.”
“I agree,” said Tufts, removing baby John from Brian’s hold and cuddling him on her lap. “You have to have my children too.”
“So,” said Grace, getting up to go kitchenward, “we’re back to the colour of the bridesmaids’ dresses.”
Whatever her sisters assumed, that first Christmas of the Great Depression loomed to find Kitty no closer to accepting Charles Burdum’s hand in marriage. They had continued to meet regularly, but a change had crept into their relationship; Kitty was cooler, less prickly, seemed to be moving farther away. Sensitive to the tiniest nuances in her behaviour, Charles began to despair without letting her see that he did. He equated success in everything, including love, with unbending strength; let him display weakness and she would think poorly of him. Especially given his lack of stature, he must never do anything that made him seem small in her eyes — he was fully the equal of any six-footer!
His actions since the economic difficulties began late in October had been admirable, with the result that his reputation in Corunda was growing rapidly. He had made no secret of his intention to use the hospital’s “war chest” to aid unemployment by building a new hospital, though it would inevitably be some time before work was started. In his role as hospital superintendent he had taken to attending every kind of public meeting held in Corunda, and was not afraid to speak his mind from the gallery, even when what he said caused a furore.
All of which Kitty couldn’t help but applaud. Charlie was no flash-in-the-pan, he was setting out to become a man of note and influence in Corunda’s affairs separate and distinct from its hospital. This definitely indicated that under the charming veneer lay a sterling character, fearless, right-minded, clever, strong.
The Rector and his wife were giving a Christmas night dinner for the family, and all three nursing sisters were off duty until Boxing Day. Grace and Bear, Edda and Jack Thurlow, Tufts and Liam Finucan, and Kitty and Charles were invited.