Trust Me

  He just stood there staring at her. He had a beer-stain down the front of his shirt, and his eyes were all wild and bloodshot. He looked as if he couldn’t believe what he’d heard. She had never used that word before, and it even shocked her.

  ‘You bitch,’ he said eventually. ‘Take that back or else.’

  ‘Or else what?’ she taunted him, getting out of the bed. ‘You’ll hit me? Go on then, make me really proud of you.’

  ‘I don’t hit women,’ he said.

  ‘You do, you hit me before I went to Sydney,’ she shouted back at him. ‘But you can’t touch me like a normal man. What are you, a bloody queer?’

  She knew this wasn’t the right way to be with him, it was cruel to ridicule him, but she didn’t care. Maybe she even wanted him to attack her, at least then she’d be justified in walking out for good.

  ‘I’m not queer,’ he shouted and punched his fist so hard against the wall that he made a dent in the plaster.

  ‘Well, tell me why we’ve been married nearly two years and I’m still a virgin,’ she said vindictively. ‘I could get our so called “marriage” annulled tomorrow. I might as well, there’s nothing in it for me.’

  All the pent-up frustration and bitterness poured out then. She raged at him for being so callous about Noël, she pointed out he hadn’t once asked her anything about May’s funeral, or even asked who took those lovely pictures of her.

  ‘I want a husband I can talk to, share my feelings with,’ she screamed at him. ‘Not a bloody brick wall.’

  ‘Be quiet, the men will hear you,’ he said, and sank down on to the bed.

  ‘I don’t care who hears,’ she raged. ‘I’ve lived a bloody lie for two years, making out we were happy. May knew the truth, she taunted me with it the last time I saw her alive.’

  ‘She was a lying tart,’ he said.

  ‘Maybe she was, but she knew what was what. She said I only married you because I felt sorry for you.’

  ‘Did you?’ He looked up at her, his eyes suddenly brimming with tears.

  ‘Yes,’ she said defiantly. ‘And I’ve stayed with you for the same reason. But I don’t feel sorry for you any longer. I just feel sorry for me because I’ve got nothing.’

  ‘But I built this house. I’ve worked so hard for you,’ he whimpered.

  He looked pathetic to her, sitting there hanging his head. The fumes of the beer he’d drunk were gradually filling the bedroom.

  ‘You built this house so you could boast about it,’ she snapped. ‘You work hard so you don’t have time to think about what’s really wrong with you. That’s the truth, so don’t get on your high horse and say I’m ungrateful.’

  ‘Are you going to leave me now?’ he asked, his voice hardly more than a whisper.

  That plaintive question cut through her anger, and all at once she remembered that she had intended to cure him a few weeks ago, not crush him.

  ‘Only if you refuse to do what I say,’ she said.

  ‘I’ll do anything,’ he whispered. ‘Just don’t leave me.’

  She took a deep breath. ‘Well, the first thing is that you stop avoiding having to talk to me. You won’t work every evening any more.’

  ‘Okay,’ he said.

  ‘The second thing is that you’ve got to try and overcome whatever it is that stops you making love to me.’

  ‘But I don’t know what it is,’ he said.

  ‘Then we have to find out,’ she said firmly. ‘After Christmas we’re going to take a trip up to Perth. You’re going to take me to Bindoon.’

  He visibly shuddered and shook his head. ‘I can’t do that. I don’t ever want to go back there.’

  ‘You might not want to, but you’re going to,’ she said. ‘If not, I’m leaving.’

  She couldn’t believe she could be so hard. Most of her wanted to put her arms around him and comfort him, but a small steely part insisted she had to hold her ground.

  Nothing was said for some minutes, he continued to sit on the bed, his head in his hands, she stood by the window, hands on hips, glowering down at him. Yet the longer she stood there, the stronger she felt. Saying her piece tonight had brought her spirit back, she wasn’t going to lose it again.

  ‘Well?’ she asked eventually. ‘Do I get a promise, or do I leave? It’s up to you.’

  ‘You don’t know what it’s like up there,’ he said.

  ‘If you take me there I will,’ she said.

  ‘Okay,’ he sighed. ‘I’ll go.’

  ‘If you back down when the time comes, it’s over,’ she reminded him. ‘There won’t be any second chances.’

  He looked up at her, his eyes full of tears. ‘Why are you being so hard?’

  ‘For your own good,’ she said tartly. ‘And for mine, because this isn’t a marriage, Ross, it’s misery. I don’t intend to spend the rest of my life living this way.’

  Chapter Twenty-five

  ‘There it is!’ Ross exclaimed, slowing down and pointing to a track off the road they were on. ‘That’s it, bloody Bindoon Boys’ Town.’

  His voice held a curious mixture of dread and excitement, and as Dulcie looked at him, rather than towards where he was pointing, she saw his face was flushed and his lips trembling.

  ‘I can’t see anything but trees,’ she said.

  ‘It’s a bloody long way down the drive,’ he said sharply. ‘You should try walking it in bare feet.’

  It was the first week in February and they’d left Esperance eight days ago, driving up the coast to Perth making two overnight stops on the way. Since then they’d been staying with Joan, Bruce’s sister-in-law, in Subiaco. So far the holiday had been a dismal failure, however hard Dulcie tried to please Ross. She knew of course that he didn’t want to go in the first place, but she’d had high hopes that once they were on their way he’d enter into the spirit of it. Yet it seemed he was determined to be difficult. It was too hot to go on the beach, he didn’t like the city, food was too expensive, the beer was flat, he saw no point in looking in shops without money to spend. Parks were boring, he had nothing to talk about to Joan and her relatives, he snapped and grumbled at Dulcie constantly.

  She knew the root cause of this was because the trip to Bindoon was to be part of the holiday, and perhaps he hoped if he made her mad enough she’d want to go home. Yet Dulcie had seen for herself right from Christmas that Ross was in fact incapable of enjoying himself.

  She didn’t know why she’d only just woken up to this, for he was no different to how he’d always been; awkward with new people, too bombastic with those he knew well, he had no conversation aside from farming and he wasn’t curious about other people. Yet now she had noticed he never relaxed, he always had to be doing something all the time, and he was at his happiest when it was hard physical work. But saddest of all to her was that he had no sense of fun.

  At Christmas they’d gone to the beach for a picnic with Bruce, Bob and John. Ross got cross with her because she larked around in the sea with the men. Maybe it was childish that John kept pretending to be a shark, diving under the water and grabbing her legs, or that John and Bob made a human pyramid with her on the top, only to be thrown off when John lost his balance, but it was fun. She kept urging Ross to join in, but he stood in the shallow water glowering like a petulant six-year-old and later told her she’d made a fool of herself.

  Drinking was his only relaxant, two or three beers and he became mellow, but he rarely stopped at that. He would go on downing them, becoming argumentative and ready to start a fight with anyone.

  The more she saw all these flaws in his character, the more she found herself thinking of Rudie and comparing them. Rudie knew how to relax, he just flung himself on the couch with a book or listened to music and was sublimely happy. He made fun happen, whether it was ringing round a few friends to invite them to supper, suddenly downing his paint-brushes and suggesting a walk, a ride on the ferry to Sydney, or some fish and chips down by the beach. To him a roomful of strangers was a room
ful of potential friends, talking, dancing and laughing were completely natural to him.

  She was very careful to keep in mind Ross’s talents. Rudie couldn’t have built her a house, he couldn’t toil tirelessly the way Ross did. She doubted very much that he was brave enough to drive a tractor right up to a bush fire, to hunt down a snake she’d seen and kill it for her, or to stay up all night with a cow in labour.

  But it was fun, affection and laughter Dulcie hankered for. She was alone most of the day while the men were outside working, with only an hour of cheerful company with the men at supper, then back to her house for an evening of silence. If this trip didn’t bring some change or response from Ross, she knew in her heart she’d have to walk away for good for it was slowly destroying her.

  ‘Come on, drive in,’ she said, for Ross was just sitting there with the engine running, staring at the sign that read ‘Bindoon Boys’ Home’.

  ‘We can’t go in,’ he said. ‘The Brothers won’t like it.’

  ‘They can’t turn an old boy away from his school,’ she said firmly. ‘Besides, this is what this trip is all about, you are going to show it to me and defy the Brothers. They can’t hit you now, remember.’

  Slowly and reluctantly he edged the car into the drive, which was just dry gravel, flanked on either side by scrubby land with a few sparse trees. ‘This was all thick woods,’ he said. ‘We chopped the trees down and cleared the ground of stones for the building work.’

  The track kept going and going, then it began to dip downwards and curve to the right. Ross stopped sharply on the bend. ‘There it is,’ he said, nodding his head to the buildings below.

  Dulcie gasped, not in horror, but at its beauty. To her it looked like an Italian domed palace stuck in the middle of the bush. Bathed in strong sunshine, its red tiled roofs, the porticoes and stone balustrades along both floors of the main building were incredibly impressive.

  ‘All built by children,’ he muttered grimly ‘See those golden-coloured stones used on the end walls, those are the ones we collected from back up where we passed just now. Bloody great boulders, most of them, I dropped one on my bare foot one day, it swelled up and went all black, but Keaney made me go on working.’

  He opened the car door and got out. Dulcie followed him. ‘See that,’ he said, stopping by a wire fence and pointing to a large stone cross on a plinth in front of them. ‘That’s one of the bloody Stations of the Cross, we built those too. Hauled them up here, breaking our backs.’

  He pointed out the other twelve all along the drive. ‘Take your shoes off,’ he ordered her. ‘Feel how hot it is!’

  Dulcie slipped one foot out of her shoes, but as she put it down on the ground she winced at the heat and the sharpness of the stones, quickly lifting it up again.

  ‘Walk on it!’ Ross insisted. ‘You wanted to know what it was like here, try that!’

  Hardened as Dulcie’s feet were, she could only take a few hobbling steps before putting her shoes back on. It was almost inconceivable that young children with tender feet had been forced to endure it day after day.

  They got back into the car and Ross drove on down to the school. His face was grim, but he drove faster now, pointing out the Technical Building which had been the first project he worked on when he got here in 1947. He described how a ramp had been built which went from the first-floor level to the top of the walls at an angle of eighteen degrees, and how all the materials to lay two giant slabs of concrete which would roof in the two wing ends of the building were put in hessian bags on wheelbarrows, which two boys would haul it up like coolies. He said railway lines were used to reinforce the massive concrete beams, weighing forty-five pounds to the foot, and that they too were manhandled up this ramp by a line of boys on each side.

  ‘It was bloody dangerous, if just one boy lost his footing, a half ton of steel out of control could cut off their legs, knock them off the ramp or even kill them if it landed on top of them. I reckon it was like building the pyramids or the Burma railroad.’

  Ross stopped the car suddenly in front of a large bronze statue up on a plinth which stood right in front of the school. It was of a Brother, his arm paternally around a small boy’s shoulder.

  ‘That’s him, the bastard,’ Ross hissed. ‘Fucking Brother Keaney. So-called friend of orphans. See, he’s got boots on, but the boy’s got none, at least they got that right. But how dare they honour him with a statue!’

  Dulcie had heard a great deal about this Irishman Keaney from Ross. He got his first blow from him as a six-year-old at Clontarf orphanage in Perth, where Keaney was once the Superior. Even there this six-foot-two, eighteen-stone man was building, using children as labourers – in that case his construction work was a large chapel. Then he went on to Tardun, yet another orphanage where he played a part in settling boys on their own farms.

  ‘Park up the car,’ Dulcie said, anxious to get out and look around. ‘You can look at that again later.’

  Ross drove on and they left the car by some outbuildings. It was very quiet, the current boys at the school were clearly in class or out working on the vast area of farmland surrounding it. Flies bombarded both of them, a sharp reminder to Dulcie of her time at the Masters’ place in Salmon Gums. There were of course a great many flies at Esperance too at this time of year, but not in this quantity because of its position near the coast.

  ‘They were more torture,’ Ross said as he flapped them away. ‘They’d cling to your eyes, nose and mouth, and feed on sores or broken skin. But you got used to it.’

  Dulcie didn’t think she could ever get used to it, but she was distracted then by a Brother coming towards them, out of the building Ross had said was the dairy. He wore a long black soutane, his head bare. Ross stiffened, his face blanching, clenching and unclenching his hands.

  ‘Do you know him?’ she whispered.

  ‘Yes, it’s Brother Casey,’ he whispered back.

  Dulcie knew instinctively that Ross was unlikely to be able to speak coherently to this man, so she stepped forward. ‘G’day. I’m Dulcie Rawlings,’ she said, ‘Ross’s wife, he’s just brought me here to show me round his old school.’

  Brother Casey did not look frightening, he was well over sixty, slender with white hair, walking with a stick, and his smile was welcoming. ‘I’m pleased to meet you, Mrs Rawlings,’ he said, shaking her hand. ‘And how are you doing, Ross?’

  ‘Fine, sir,’ Ross said, his voice cracking with nervousness. ‘Just up from Esperance on a holiday.’

  ‘Are you farming?’ Brother Casey asked. His sharp blue eyes kept darting to Dulcie. She wondered if he had been cruel to Ross, and if he was going to say anything about him absconding.

  Ross nodded. ‘A big spread down on the coast. I manage it now.’

  This wasn’t strictly true, but Dulcie could perfectly well understand his need to boost his image.

  ‘I’ve got some chores to do,’ Brother Casey said. ‘But you can show your wife around. You’ll find some changes since you were here.’

  ‘Where are all the boys?’ Dulcie asked. ‘It’s very quiet.’

  ‘Some are in class, some out working. But a bunch of them have gone out camping in the bush, they won’t be back till tomorrow.’

  He abruptly turned and walked away, and it was only then that Dulcie realized he wasn’t in the habit of welcoming old boys, and hoped they’d leave quickly.

  ‘Was he one of the cruel ones?’ Dulcie asked as the man disappeared back into the dairy.

  Ross shrugged. ‘They all were, but he never laid into me. He only came here in my last year. But I want to go now, there’s nothing I want to see.’

  He was still very pale, and Dulcie was astounded that a man who could stand up to anyone normally should be made so fearful by one old man.

  ‘But there’s a lot I want to see,’ she said firmly ‘So come on, show me around.’

  He took her over to the Technical Building and she peered through the windows. In one room there were some b
oys doing woodwork, but most of the other rooms were rather bare classrooms, much like the ones at St Vincent’s. He took her up the flight of steps into the impressive two-storey main administrative building, pausing nervously under the arched entrance.

  ‘See that,’ he pointed to a mosaic ahead of them on the marble floor. ‘I lost most of the skin on my fingers doing that.’

  It was cool after the searing heat outside, the yellowish-gold floor so clean and shiny it looked wet. The mosaic was a circle of pale blue, Fratres Scolarum Christianarum De Hibernia in red lettering inside it. A green cross with a white star at its centre took up the space in the circle. Beneath this was a design like a blue ribbon, Boys’ Town in red set into it.

  ‘What does the Latin mean?’ she asked.

  ‘Buggered if I know,’ he shrugged. ‘To me it means Welcome to Hell.’

  She bent over to feel the mosaic. It was so smooth that it was difficult to imagine that each tiny piece of marble had been placed there by the hand of a small boy.

  Yet as Ross took her into the building she saw for herself how he came to know so much about building, and indeed was such a perfectionist in his work. Marble pillars, graceful arches in blues, creams and greens, it was all so incredible. He had previously told her there were two Italian stonemasons working under Father Urbano, the architect who directed the boys in their work. For these men he had some affection, for they had been kindly towards the boys, yet all the labouring – and Dulcie was overwhelmed by the sheer size of the place – was done by the boys, the Brothers working merely as overseers.

  There was so much she wanted to know, what the rooms upstairs in the building were used for, how many Brothers were there in Ross’s time, and how many now. She wanted to know if it was still a cruel place, to see close up, perhaps even speak to some of the boys, but Ross was growing more and more agitated. He kept speaking of other boys by name, describing atrocities that were done to them as if it had all happened yesterday, and he barely let her see the beautiful chapel before dragging her outside again.