Bittersweet

  “Whoredom is a state of mind in which the woman expects to be paid for her services. Money isn’t always the tender — that might be anything from power to deeds — but there is always a contract to be signed. It’s not the act makes a woman a whore, it’s purely her mental attitude. Men are whores too, but usually sex isn’t their weapon.”

  “That’s very odd and perceptive for a mere grazier to come out with. But it’s the quality in you draws me, I freely admit it. Your mind isn’t boring. You plant potatoes magnificently, but potatoes don’t enter your thoughts.” She linked her hands together above her head on the pillow. “So I’m desirable?”

  “As a buffet to a glutton.”

  “A little lacking in the bosom department,” she said, her grin impish.

  “More than a mouthful is wasted.”

  “Come and scrub my back, you lazy sod.”

  They were enamoured of shared showers, after which the fussy Edda changed into clean clothes to get rid of the horse aroma, and sat with him in the old homestead’s venerable kitchen drinking cold bottled beer from Jack’s ice chest. A fat lamb grazier, he made his own ice.

  “Charles Burdum is the town hero,” he said.

  “My esteemed brother-in-law. He’s rightly a hero, I feel. Rome wasn’t built in a day and nor will the new hospital be, but he’s started it, and he won’t stop until it’s finished. The money is there.” She gazed at Jack with affection — why wasn’t it love? “Thanks to you, even the bricks will be local. No one knew that there was brick clay out at Corbi until you said so.”

  “Old Henry Burdum knew. Infertile ground, which is why he never spread in Corbi’s direction. No one wanted that land.”

  “Where do you think Charlie’s going, Jack?”

  “Huh?”

  “Corunda is never going to satisfy him. There’s a political aspect to all his good works, haven’t you noticed? After he found out most West Enders don’t have the transport to get to Corbi and make bricks, he went to Sydney and bought an elderly double-decker bus. The local mechanics are happy to keep it running free of charge beyond the cost of the parts — he’s shrewd, is Charlie. He could have afforded a new bus and paid a mechanic. But if he were standing for parliament, every West Ender would vote for him no matter what his party,” Edda said dreamily. “He gave them a new industry and transport to it. Cost, all up? A hundred quid.”

  “You don’t think that’s too harsh a judgement?”

  She blew a rude noise. “Look at it and him, Jack, do! Sydney is boiling with riots between the police and the workless, the federal idiots palm off their responsibilities onto the states and can do no more for people than to announce that some knight-director of the Bank of England is coming out to advise the nation on its economic strategies — pah! Western Australia is trying to secede again — I wish they would, they couldn’t make a worse mess of things than Canberra has. Our Australian pound is being devalued, and now Jimmy Scullin has had to sack his Treasurer because it’s said the man is a blatant crook! I ask you, is this government? To me, it’s pathetic.”

  “I love to watch you when you’re indignant.”

  Having had his laugh, Jack took her hand and kissed it. “You’re right about the politics, but how exactly does Charlie Burdum fit into the picture?”

  “Don’t be dense, Jack. I’ve already told you. He has big political aspirations, I think directed at the federal parliament in Canberra. The Right Honourable Charles Burdum, Prime Minister of Australia. What I can’t see is which party he’ll join. By background and fortune he should be a Tory, but he has a spiritual affinity with the working man that suggests Labor’s right wing.”

  “He can’t be prime minister!” Jack exclaimed, aghast. “He’s a Pommy, not a dinkum Aussie.”

  Edda’s eyes mocked. “That’s not written into the constitution, though it should be, like the American one. Being a Pommy won’t stop any ambitious politician.”

  “You’re right. They’ll just play the fact down, maybe even sweep it under the rug.”

  16

  When Bear Olsen returned home at the end of July 1930, he came in on the Sydney day train in a second-class compartment, then walked the three miles from the station to his cream and green house on Trelawney Way, carrying his suitcase as if it weighed a ton. His hat was pulled low over his brow because the eyes its brim hid were red and puffy from weeping. The five-hour trip on this local that stopped at every tiny station had proven a boon, for he could let his tears flow unchecked. What did it matter if anyone saw him? Not that many did; even a second-class ticket on a train was unaffordable for most men and women these days. Unaffordable for him too, except that he knew he had to get home as soon as possible once he started in home’s direction; taking to the dirt roads as a swagman was for the future.

  His sons were in the backyard, he could hear their happy yells and chatter as he mounted the front verandah, and shrank from that inevitable meeting. Grace was on her plant verandah, he could hear her humming — how she loved that green haven!

  “Grace?” he called from the lounge room, suitcase dropped.

  “Bear! Oh, Bear!” she cried, arriving at a run to cast her arms around him, kiss his unshaven chin. “I didn’t hear the car — did you park on the street?”

  “No car,” he managed to say.

  The hat came off; Grace looked into her husband’s face and began to tremble. “Oh, Bear, what’s happened?”

  “Perkins has gone under,” he said tonelessly. “No job, no car, no severance pay, just a glowing reference that calls me the best salesman in Australia. But I didn’t have the heart to sell things people can do without when times are so terrible. Not that Mr. Perkins asked me to. It was like a landslide in the end.”

  One arm about his waist, she led him into the green haven and seated him in the planter’s chair, pulled another chair close to him and took his hands in hers.

  “You’ll get another job,” she said, trying to absorb the tragic eyes, measure the volume of tears he must have shed.

  “No, Grace, I won’t,” he said. “I’ve spent ten days going all over Sydney, my glowing reference in my hand, but there are no sales jobs. None at all. People have stopped buying. Oh, what a shock, Grace! Jobless men everywhere, queues thousands long applying for just one job, police wearing revolvers in some places where the rioting is constant, shops boarded up, house after house empty, cut off from everything to keep squatters out — if it weren’t for the Sally soup kitchens and a few other religious mobs doling out food, I reckon Sydney would be a city of dead people. At least the parts of it I saw. Some parts are better, but the jobless don’t go there because there are no factories or workshops.” He began to weep again. “Jeez, I didn’t want to cry! I thought I’d be all dried up by now.”

  She squeezed into the chair alongside him and held him to her breast, amazed to find herself tearless and composed. “You must cheer up, Bear. You’re home,” she said, throwing every ounce of feeling into that lovely little word. “You have family here, helpful contacts — Charlie will find you something to do, he’s giving out lots of jobs.”

  “Not to salesmen,” Bear said.

  Grace fished out her handkerchief and gave it to him. “It doesn’t have to be a job in sales, dear. Not right away, at any rate. Until times improve, it might be — oh, I can’t guess!”

  “Grace, the only jobs anyone is offering are in hard labour, you know that. I’ve been a salesman since I was a beardless tyke, so all I can do is talk, walk, and drive. I can’t heft bags of wheat or swing a pick and shovel to save my life.” He drew himself up, the tears gone again. “Besides, I can’t use my relationship to an important man to step into a job that thousands are fighting over. So no, I’m not applying to Charles Burdum for any sort of job — or to Jack Thurlow or your father, for that matter.”

  Appalled, Grace pulled away to stare at him and saw the humourous mouth turned down implacably, the cheeks fallen in, a faint scrag under his chin — when had he last eate
n?

  “Let’s go into the kitchen and I’ll make you lunch,” she said, pulling him to his feet. “The boys have already eaten, so we won’t tell them you’re home until you’ve had a chance to eat, have a hot bath, and put on clean clothes. Mark my words,” she chattered as they crabbed along, “you’ll feel a different man.”

  In the kitchen she put him at her work table and busied herself slicing bread. “See? No ham or tinned salmon, dear!” She laughed, a merry sound. “It’s my own home-made jam, fish paste or Marmite these days, and I put the ice chest into storage in the garage. Edda gave me her little old one out of her quarters — it keeps what I need chilled on a much smaller block of ice.”

  Now why did that make him cry again? Determined to ignore it, she finished making his fish paste sandwiches, and while he ate them, washed down by a whole pot of tea, she ran him a bath with hot water from the chip heater. Finally, fed, bathed, shaved and clothed, he was fit to meet his sons. Oh, Bear, don’t weep under their eyes too! Grace prayed.

  He did not. As he had sold virtually right around a quarter-million square miles, this last had been a lengthy absence, so to Bear his sons came as a shock. Brian was four months past two years, straight-legged and tall, slender like both his parents; his hair was still very fair, but less flaxen. And John was Brian at nearly fourteen months — walking, talking, busy, curious, adorable. From somewhere Bear managed to summon the strength to behave with them as he always did, tossing them around, laughing, pretend-spanking them — even, from out of his suitcase, to give Brian a jigsaw puzzle and John a humming top. Broke he might be, but how could a father come home to his sons without producing presents?

  “Where do I register for work in Corunda?” he asked Grace after the boys settled to play with their presents.

  “It’s only for hard labour,” she said. “They’ll give you a dole for government work, which is limited to hard labour. Jobs with skills just don’t exist. Few can do the actual labour, but they take the dole anyway. If they have to report, they just lean on their picks.”

  “I’ll not take a dole! It’s something in return for nothing.”

  “Charlie will find you something honest to do.”

  “I’m not pulling strings by going to Charlie, that’s final.”

  Luckily his travails over the past two weeks had exhausted him; by five o’clock he was tucked up in their bed asleep, and Grace was free to deal with the boys, settle them for sleep too.

  At six o’clock, in the pitch darkness, Grace lit a hurricane lantern and walked down to the junction of Trelawney Way with Wallace Street, where there was a red, Georgian-paned telephone booth. Their own phone had been disconnected when Bear cut the housekeeping last December.

  When the penny dropped, a feminine voice answered.

  “Kitty? Thank God!”

  “Grace? Is that you, Grace? You sound odd!”

  “Can you come and see me at once? I’m in the phone box, but daren’t be away too long.”

  “As soon as I can find a driver, I’ll be there.”

  Life with Charlie, Kitty was discovering, carried compensations for her giving up nursing. Though she loved Charlie very much, it had been a wrench to abandon her sick children, but the regulations were set in stone: no married nurses! However, she had Burdum House to renovate, an undertaking that involved many trips to Sydney to choose tiles, wallpapers, fabrics, floor coverings, chandeliers and sconces, furniture, fixtures and fittings. As she found Edda a great help in guiding her taste, she timed these expeditions to coincide with Edda’s days off, and the two of them had a wonderful time in Sydney, staying at the Hotel Australia and dining at places where the chef was willing to cook his meat.

  Her own forays into the kitchen were less successful; she found no thrills in watching pot contents boil over or frying pans go up in smoke, so when Charlie proposed a solution, she was ready to listen. They would hire a chef skilled enough to cater for both culinary poles, Charles’s north and Kitty’s south.

  An enchantment Kitty hadn’t expected to feel engulfed her entire life. Charlie was a wonderful lover, though why she had assumed he wouldn’t be eluded her until she realised that she had transferred her own inferiority at being so small onto him as well. Small was inadequate, small couldn’t possibly be the answer to a maiden’s prayers. Now, fallen in love with Charlie, Kitty experienced the delights of being with someone just right for her. Her few encounters with men over the years had intimidated her, she now understood. Average height men were still so tall that she was forced to stand on tiptoe for a kiss, while six-footers lifted her clear off the floor; for some reason there were even men who wanted to pick her up and cart her about like a sick dog — her metaphor, and one that had Charlie in paroxysms of mirth.

  Whereas Charlie was — Charlie was perfect! As if by instinct he knew how to arouse her, and he had a thousand ways of kissing her, all delicious. He put his hands on her with as much reverence as passion, and he let her know that she gave him huge pleasure.

  So the Kitty who had to wait for a taxi was bubbling with joy, a joy she genuinely hadn’t thought could grow any greater until that very morning, when Dr. Ned Mason had told her she was definitely expecting a baby. A baby! Her own baby!

  Grace and Kitty met, and were stupefied.

  Grace saw a transfigured Kitty, beautiful and triumphant, a woman free from care, woe, worry.

  Kitty saw a shattered Grace, all joy stripped from her, eyes protruding, body trembling, her beauty blighted.

  “Grace, darling, what is it? What’s the matter?”

  In answer Grace walked past her, wringing her hands together, then turned, it seemed gathering herself to dredge up a vanished courage, and said, “Bear has lost his job.”

  “Grace! How — how awful! Let’s sit in the kitchen, it’s warm with the fuel stove — thank God Jack Thurlow keeps you well supplied with wood,” Kitty babbled, pushing the kettle onto the hotter part of the hob. “No, I can make the tea.”

  “You’re too short,” said Grace, pushing Kitty into the chair and tipping a little hot water into the teapot to warm it. “Good strong tea, that’s what we both need.” Her grey gaze, calming, saw clearly at last. “How lovely!” she cried. “There’s a baby.”

  “I only found out this morning, but don’t say anything until I’ve had a chance to tell Charlie.”

  “Mum’s the word, I promise.” The tea making proceeded with smooth efficiency. “I’m actually all right, just terrified at the change in Bear,” she said, doling out cups and saucers. “I had to be the strong one when he came home today, isn’t that a turn-up for the books? And do you know what, Kits? I did it! I was strong for Bear and my boys. I — me, myself — didn’t seem important somehow. He cried so! He was that proud of being the top Perkins man! But the firm’s gone under, closed its doors.” She poured tea. “The trouble is that he’s not a physically strong man, he certainly couldn’t do hard labour. And he’s a proud man too. Very proud! I need you to talk to Charlie, explain all that.”

  “Don’t worry, I will. I agree about the hard labour, but Bear has a brain, which is far better. Charlie will know the answer.”

  “It’s not that simple,” Grace said, sipping at the very hot tea. “Bear’s got it into his head that it would be wrong to pull strings by asking Charlie for help. In fact, he won’t hear of it. Honestly, Kits, I’m not exaggerating.”

  “I see.”

  “Oh, Kitty, I hope you do!”

  Charles Burdum walked in, mouth tight. “At least you left me a message, I can be thankful for that, I suppose,” he said, sitting down at the table, but one hand out imperiously to Grace. “No, no tea, please! How you can all drink coal-tar and call it tea I do not know.”

  “Dear, dear,” said Grace mildly, “in a bad mood, are we?”

  “A taxi, Kitty?” he asked. “Was it so urgent that you see your sister at this hour?”

  “As a matter of fact, yes,” she said, a little winded at his displeasure. “Bear has ju
st come home without a job. Perkins is no more. The poor fellow is a cot-case.”

  The metaphorical slap in his face had its calculated effect; Charles looked horrified, contrite, embarrassed. “Oh, Grace, I’m so sorry!” And, to his wife, “My dear, I apologise. It’s been a nasty sort of day, but I had no right to take it out on you.”

  “More to the point, Charlie,” said Kitty, brushing apologies aside, “Bear is being very stubborn and refuses to ask you for a job or pull strings of any kind.”

  “I understand,” he said, meaning it. “Everything Bear is, he won by his own efforts and hard work. A working man’s pride is very strong in him, I’ve always admired his success.”

  “In the meantime, Charlie, Grace had to walk with a lantern to the phone box to ask me to come, and I refuse to have that worry as well. Grace must have a phone,” said Kitty, “but not a party line.”

  “Grace will have a phone, and not a party line.”

  Kitty leaned toward Grace, eyes pleading. “You must explain to Bear, Grace, that it’s for Daddy’s peace of mind. Without a phone, you and the boys are cut off from the family.”

  “Yes, Kitty, I understand that, and I’m happy to agree. If Daddy weren’t a minister, Bear would listen to him, but he hates religion. He says all the wars are fought over differing ideas of God,” said Grace, who was beginning to see that her present problems would never matter to anyone else the way they did to her. And it was all her own fault. Were she not an incurable spendthrift, Bear would have met this disaster with £1000 in the bank, if not more. You, Grace Olsen, she told herself, have a lot of grief to answer for, not the least your husband’s present devastation.

  “Yes, well,” she said brightly, “having told my news, there doesn’t seem much else to do until tomorrow, when Bear wakes up. Will you see him, Charlie?”

  “Of course,” he said warmly. “I’ll be here at nine.” He rose to his feet. “I’ll wait in the car for you, Kitty.”

  “He’ll cheer up no end when you tell him about the baby,” Grace said, smiling. “As for me, don’t think I haven’t admitted that were it not for me, we’d have money in the bank.”