Bittersweet

  Remembering, she heard Edda’s distant voice deploring Jack’s lack of ambition — an unavaricious person, how rare! Not knowing Jack loved her, Edda had gone elsewhere, burned for Medicine. What Kitty saw, coming away from two hours in Jack Thurlow’s company, was a man who communed with the spirits of wind, water, earth, even fire. Afraid of nothing, but asking for nothing either.

  How strange! All my life, thought Kitty, I have been surrounded by people who wanted what they couldn’t have and struggled desperately to grab at it. Struck down, they hauled themselves up and started to struggle all over again. Whereas Jack Thurlow would never so demean himself.

  Edda would say he was thick, meaning not very clever. Tufts would say he was a sterling character, meaning he had a sense of honour and of duty. Grace would say he was the essence of kindness, meaning he had offered himself on her altar. Daddy would say he was a fine man who didn’t go to church, meaning he was a candidate for a lesser heaven. And what would Charlie say of a cousin? At first he would look utterly blank, for he would genuinely have to cogitate before Jack’s face emerged from his morass. Then he’d say Jack was a sterling character, meaning he had not seen the politico-commercial light because he was content with life’s dreary backwaters, and therefore of no account.

  I am feeling pain for him, Kitty thought, the kind of wringing, juiceless pangs that only come out of blind failure; for, like Edda and Grace, I too have passed by Jack Thurlow’s sorrows as if they didn’t exist. How he must have hoped as he waited out the long years from Edda’s seventeenth birthday to her marriage. And when he realised he’d probably never get Edda, he tried for her twin. But he didn’t complain, and his reaction to Grace’s public refusal looked to the world like stung pride. There are different varieties of pity; Jack chose one that Corunda saw as exactly right.

  Today he filled my eyes, I seemed to be gifted with a sudden and utterly unexpected insight. Is it that my own troubles were shown up as something less than I imagined? He’s cured of Edda now, yet he hasn’t emerged from those nine years diminished, or soured, or emasculated. He’s what he always was, and always will be — a man wedded to the earth and its creatures.

  Whenever he is in Corunda, I will have tea and scones in his kitchen on Wednesday mornings, say hello to Alf and Daisy on the back verandah, and propitiate Bert on its master’s knees. He’s an island of granite in a quicksand sea.

  She stopped the car to gaze across the sullen, rounded mountains, whitewashed by snow against a bruised sky that hung heavy as a sheet of lead. Flakes of snow, fat and wet, idled by her in a random, carefree dance into the arms of an invisible oblivion. Beautiful!

  When Charlie came in with Dorcas that evening, he behaved as he always did: gave her a little kiss on the cheek and asked her what she had done with her day. Tonight, unaware what she did, Kitty moved so that his kiss fell short, and did not answer him.

  While he went to the sideboard to prepare their drinks, and after Dorcas had settled herself in “her” chair, Kitty spoke — to Dorcas alone. Those keen yet watery eyes had noticed everything, but the body hadn’t betrayed this; Dorcas was terrified of offending Charlie, who didn’t like her making deductions from Kitty’s behaviour.

  “You look lovely this evening, Dorcas,” Kitty said, pitying her.

  “Thank you, Kitty!” Dorcas sounded artificial, for the remark had startled her — why was Kitty ignoring her husband?

  “You’ve caught the nuances exactly,” Kitty went on with a warming smile for Dorcas. “An understated smartness that will surely go down very well in Melbourne, always the place I dreaded. I’m too frilly and fussy to suit Melbourne feminine tastes, but you’re perfect, Dorcas. I give it a twelve-month, and all the politicians will be clamouring for a lady assistant half so elegant, intelligent and yet unobtrusive as Charles Burdum’s peerless Dorcas Chandler.”

  A whole array of emotions had marched at flicker-speed through those contradictory eyes as Kitty spoke, the mind under them racing faster than a meteor down the sky, and all the while the woman knew she didn’t dare look for guidance to her boss, stranded with his back turned — how to react, how to divine what Kitty was up to? And he was no help, refused to turn back in the women’s direction.

  “You don’t think this blue is too dark?” Dorcas asked anxiously.

  “No, it’s lovely — ultramarine rather than dour Prussian or martial navy,” said Kitty. “You may take it that I’m right — my poor taste is for myself alone. For others, I’m spot-on.”

  Charles turned at last. “That’s absolutely true,” he said, giving Dorcas a sherry. “Yes, Dorcas, ultramarine is spot-on.”

  Kitty took her sherry with a cool smile.

  You bitch! he was thinking. What happened today, that your dislike of me is finally manifest before an audience? I think that tonight I might claim my conjugal rights.

  But Kitty was ahead of him. Halfway through the main course she complained of a headache’s onset and went to bed. He was left with Dorcas on his hands.

  “I wondered what was the matter with her,” he said after Kitty had gone. “Some headaches are prodromal before the aura arrives.”

  “One forgets that your degree is in Medicine,” said Dorcas composedly, putting her knife and fork together tidily. “No, truly, I’ve had sufficient. Sometimes I feel like a Strasbourg goose.”

  “A very charming one,” he said, lifting his glass to her. “One fears their aggression — geese — but beneath it, they are first cousins to swans.”

  Time to burn her boats; did she not, the Kitty situation would explode.

  “You may slap me down, and I’ll deserve it, Charles, but I feel I must say that your wife is an unhappy woman,” she said, no note of apology in her voice. “In fact, very unhappy.”

  Her moment was shrewdly chosen; his shoulders slumped. “Yes, I’m well aware of it. She’s a woman lives for children and desperate for her own, but she suffers miscarriages.”

  “Ah! The orphanage.”

  “And a trained children’s nurse, don’t forget.”

  “She’s still a young woman.”

  “The obstetricians can find nothing wrong. Nor can I. Worst of all is that she blames me.” There! It was out, he’d said it.

  Dorcas kept her face smooth and impassive, though her eyes had a suspiciously moist sparkle. “I can’t pretend to wisdom, Charles, as I’ve never been married, but common sense says that time heals all wounds, even the mental ones. She’s a sensible woman at heart.”

  “Yes, I hope to see her mend, but there are cures and cures. Kitty is a home body, whereas I’m drawn to public life — I revel in it! That’s a situation will worsen with time, not improve.”

  “Then don’t worry about it,” Dorcas said comfortably. “Haven’t you noticed that in Australian politics wives have little or nothing to say? Even very often are unseen, too? You can have politics and she Burdum House. Her importance in political circles is negligible. When, two or three times a year, you are obliged to produce a wife, then yours will stun everybody except Sir Rawson Schiller, who married her half sister. It’s a legend in the making, Charles, you must never forget that! The Latimer double twins will have their part in Australian myth, between Lady Schiller, the future Lady Burdum — you’ll be knighted, Charles, nothing surer — hospital superintendent Latimer, and Depression widow Olsen. I’ll write it myself when they’re older. In the meantime, don’t fret about Kitty. She has her orphanage, her sisters, her father, and Corunda. Your own horizons are far wider, you know that without my needing to tell you.”

  He sat galvanised, his eyes gone to the colour of a lion’s; she must remember to make sure his barber never thinned the leonine mane of his hair or slimed it with brilliantine — he must have his image. Secretly smiling, she thought of Prime Minister Joe Lyons; another fine head of hair not slicked down to patent leather as the fashion dictated. Or, for that matter, Jimmy Scullin. Women loved a fine head of hair! What repelled them were bad teeth, paunches and baldness.
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  “Dorcas,” he almost sang, “what would I do without you?”

  Sink like a stone, she answered silently, into the abyss.

  Dorcas noticed it first, but felt she could say nothing, so it was Grace who spoke to Charles just after 1933 began. Even then, such had not been her purpose when she sought a formal audience with him: she was there for her boys.

  They came with her. Quite old for their years, Charles saw immediately, especially Brian, doomed to wear the mantle of man of the house. Of course she’d done that to him! Oh, not through weepy helplessness and constant verbal reminders that he was The Man Nowadays — Grace was too clever for sledgehammer tactics. Simply, she hadn’t concealed her widow’s plight from him either. Some would have called that sensible; others, like Charles, deemed it unnecessary at their ages. Brian would shortly turn five; John would turn four on May’s last day. Very alike. They would keep their blond colouring from lashes to thatches, the Scandinavian cast of their facial bones. They made Charles think there was more Teuton and Viking in the Latimers than there was Briton or Celt, for clearly their mother’s inheritance was closely allied to their father’s. The difference lay in their eyes. Both pairs were the blue of the sky, no hint of the sea’s greys or the forest’s greens. Ah, but the minds that burned behind each pair were very different! Brian’s gaze was unflinching and hard to meet — the thinking warrior. John’s gaze was other-worldly, a little sad — the seeker after truth. Poor John, he’d have it stony.

  I should own two sons of this age, Charles thought, though if they were mine, they’d be as Carrara marble alongside the Parian of this pair. Here all is flawlessly white, no fascinating veins and swirls of a myriad colours. Still, what use in repining? My lot has been two miscarriages, one so late that I buried a child.

  “How may I help you, Grace?” he asked, concealing his edgy apprehension; she never meant joy, did Grace.

  “Here’s the potato with all its eyes dug out and whiskers scrubbed off, Charlie. I want to move to Sydney,” Grace announced.

  Then he looked at her for the first time, made aware that his mind and gaze had devoured her sons alone. The Madonna of the Rocks! flew through the archives of his brain — beautiful, remote, above all earthly pleasures, the granite and adamant encompassing her now an integral part of her, every atom of life concentrated in her offspring. Verily they were extraordinary, the four Latimer sisters!

  “A huge upheaval,” he said noncommittally, and waited.

  “Now is the right moment. Brian will start at school next month. But not here.” Her voice altered, became more honeyed, a ploy she knew he’d see through in a second, but wanted to use to reinforce her position as his abject supplicant. “I thought of going to Rawson Schiller, another brother-in-law, but he’s a Melbourne man, and as far as I’m concerned, Edda is welcome to Melbourne. Too hot in summer, too cold in winter. No, it’s Sydney for me.” Her voice thinned from warm honey to cold water. “You’re so rich, Charlie, that I have no compunction in asking you for a little gold to grease my machinery. Bear’s sons cannot be reared in a place where everyone knows their history, or go to school with the children of people who witnessed their father’s dementia and suicide.”

  His eyes went back instinctively to the little boys, one at each of their mother’s knees, like the lions guarding some statue of Magna Mater — how could she speak of such things in front of them? Brian was looking straight ahead, John into a dream.

  And her voice was flowing on, inexorable. “You can easily afford to set me up in a decent house in Bellevue Hill, with a car and an income appropriate for a respectable widow who has no intention of making a social splash. I want my sons educated in private schools, though not the same one. Scots will suit Brian, whereas John will do better at Sydney Grammar. You can see that I’ve thought it all out and made my own enquiries.”

  “Admirably thought out,” he said, not grudging her a penny of the considerable sum she was about to cost him. With Grace at least, he’d beaten Rawson Schiller to the prize. “You won’t be lonely, moving to a place where you have no friends or contacts?”

  “I’ll soon make friends and establish contacts,” she said, smiling. “That’s what school parent associations are for. One day the Depression will be over, and I want my boys prepared to seize the fruits of its harvest. The best schools, university, a little influence when it comes time to apply for jobs. They’ll have no nest-egg of capital if they’re inclined toward business, but they’ll have the status and education to obtain it.”

  “Time to go out and play, boys,” Charles said lightly. A look to their mother, a nod from her, and they left. “You’ve brought them up beautifully, Grace.”

  “As far as I can, in Corunda. They’ll be day pupils during their prep school years, but at twelve I want them boarding at school — a more expensive affair, but they have no man at home, and they will need greater exposure to a man’s world. A woman is no guide for a boy going through puberty and adolescence, I would flounder in an unknown sea. Daddy’s children were all girls.”

  “You perpetually amaze me,” Charles said hollowly.

  “Because I can see what my children need ahead of what I need myself?” Grace laughed. “Oh, come, Charlie! It’s a poor mother isn’t capable of that. Things happen, and we never know why. I certainly don’t. As the mother of Bear’s children, I want them to surpass him, which is what he would have wanted too. He was never an envious or bitter person. Just give me enough money to live the kind of life my sons’ friends and their parents will expect to see — good food if I am obliged to entertain, plenty of good clothes for them — I can make my own, it’s something to do with my time, since I won’t be able to work in Sydney either. I have my own furniture, but I want to be able to buy books to stock a little library — it will be useful for the boys.”

  Pad under his hand, he started writing busily. “House in Bellevue Hill, looking down to Rose Bay — yes, I think you ought to have a view, it’s a poor house in that part of Sydney doesn’t have one — and in your name, though I’ll pay the rates and taxes. A nice car, easy to have repaired — in — your — name. Good! I’ll have my solicitors add the necessary codicils to my will to protect you in the event of my death — I wouldn’t want Rawson stepping in there! Twenty pounds a week income, free and clear — raise it with the cost of living — school fees, uniforms, books and educational et ceteras in a separate account, I think. And a nest-egg of capital, properly invested — twenty thousand is about right — not to be touched unless in direst emergency.” The pen went down, he screwed its cap on and looked at her. “Is that all, Grace? Have I forgotten anything?”

  “Nothing. Thank you, Charles, from the bottom of my heart.” Came a dazzling smile. “I will never call you Charlie again.”

  “That’s reward enough.”

  “I suppose Kitty’s at the orphanage?”

  His face went immediately to gargoyle. “Where else? Can’t seem to have any herself, buries her heartbreak in the children other people have all too freely.”

  “Oh, don’t be bitter, Charles, please! She feels it so! In fact, she’s sliding downhill.”

  He stiffened. “She’s what?”

  “Sliding downhill. You must have noticed.”

  “I — I haven’t seen very much of her lately.”

  Yes, you’re too busy huddled with Horsey Dorcas, Grace said to herself grimly. Aloud she said, “She doesn’t change her dress every day, or even every second or third day. Her hair’s a mess and she’s stopped wearing lipstick. I had a go at her, but I got nowhere. According to Kitty, the children don’t mind what she has on, and they hate lipstick because it comes between them and her kisses. Charles, Kitty’s sliding downhill, and as a doctor, you should know what I mean.”

  “That she’s in tune with the times, depressed.”

  “Exactly.”

  But never on Wednesdays. That was the key piece of the jigsaw, the one piece Grace had no opportunity to see.

  Of c
ourse Grace misinterpreted a large part of what she saw, given her own, very different personality; what she did was to resurrect Kitty’s childhood depression, attach it to her present situation, and come up with the conclusion that Kitty would shortly be joining Maude at the old-aged home. Whereas the truth was far from a mid-twenties attack of the dumps. Her work at the orphanage, she had soon discovered, was hampered by any kind of uniform, and ordinary clothes had to look at least a little like the dresses these children’s mothers might have worn. So Kitty “broke in” her garb on a non-orphanage day, and if it survived one day fairly well at the orphanage, she wore it again the next day. After all, no one could say that her loss of elegance made her look like a farm missus! Simply, it was more practical, as well as cheaper to maintain. Why wear silk stockings at ten shillings a pair only to see them laddered within minutes of arriving at the orphanage?

  Tufts understood; Grace didn’t, nor did Dorcas Chandler.

  How she looked was the last thing on Kitty’s mind, which found itself strangely liberated to run not in its old circles but in straight lines that forked in ways easy to follow, and led back to the branching point lit up like Christmas trees. Her life, illuminated and emblazoned, finally made sense. How terrible, to gaze back across the years and see them shaped and sustained by one overmastering quality — appearance. Her sisters had always understood, but they too were limited by what each was at her core. And oh, how time had splintered them!

  Jack Thurlow floated, a disembodied thought, in the back of Kitty’s mind, all through that winter and spring, reinforced on the Wednesday mornings when he was at home by two hours of tea and scones and conversation. Never as an intruder, and never unwelcome. She could tell him anything that his man’s intellect and emotions would accept, and so skilled was he at setting the boundaries that she had no trouble stopping before she said too much. About the pieces of her heart broken by miscarriages and a possessive husband Jack didn’t want to hear, and out of her new-found wisdom she understood why. There were men’s things and women’s things; they led on from the manifest differences of anatomy into the realms of the intangible soul.