Bittersweet (40 page)

As far as Rawson himself was concerned, marriage to Edda got him all the things so long withheld due to his being a bachelor. In every way he had married the right woman, in that no one ever questioned why such a long-settled bachelor had fallen for this woman and no other. She was incredibly stylish as well as beautiful, obviously well-bred, had a fund of conversation of all kinds, was able to flatter those Rawson needed to flatter, could snub someone with wit and aplomb yet remain a lady — yes, Edda was ideal, and no one blamed him for marrying a fascinating and unusual woman. A medical student, for heaven’s sake!

But she made no friends among the women of his sphere, for no other reason than that her studies didn’t give her the time. On occasion she would meet someone to whom she was strongly drawn, but how could she spare two hours for morning coffee or three hours for lunch? Impossible. The books called like a siren-song, and she was enchanted.

A
s the Depression went from bad to worse, so too did government, especially the federal government in Canberra. Now Premier of New South Wales, Jack Lang refused to pay the state’s interest on loans, forcing Canberra to pay in his stead. Then, when Canberra demanded to be repaid, Lang refused. Federal Labor was in peril, split into irreconcilable factions; Prime Minister Scullin had reappointed his allegedly crooked Treasurer, and that led Joe Lyons to resign first from his ministry, then, in March of 1931, from the Labor Party. Tottering anyway, the conservative Nationalist Party finally succumbed, and a new political party was born, the United Australia Party, led by none other than Joe Lyons, who favoured the continuance of retrenchment. A new election saw the U.A.P. victorious, and Joe Lyons was Prime Minister of Australia.

No climate in which to launch a new career! So Charles Burdum kept on with his exercise books and his drafting of a constitution for a genuinely new political party. The marriage of his sister-in-law to Sir Rawson Schiller on the cusp of November–December of 1931 sounded a kind of spiritual death-knell to
Charles, though whether for his own marriage or because Schiller was bigger in every way, he hadn’t decided. Who could ever have predicted that Edda would snare a
Schiller
?

Looking like a raccoon (thank God they weren’t native to Australia!) had forced Charles to take leave from the hospital for the whole of December; he buried himself in his library filling in exercise books with his political philosophy. Halfway through her degree, Tufts was eminently capable of running the place unaided. What he refused to admit was the actual insult tipped the scales in favour of self-banishment: if he heard Liam Finucan sing “Two Lovely Black Eyes” one more time, he’d scream!

Marriage in tatters due to his wife’s wretched sisters, his mind ran in ever-decreasing circles, at its hub this insane tussle about where a wife’s loyalties should lie, but his wife’s loyalties didn’t. The district-wide gossip inflamed his temper to a point where it definitely became preferable to skulk at home than go out among a forest of clattering, tattling tongues. Of course he blamed the gossip on Grace and the female staff at the orphanage; it never occurred to him for one moment that its real source was his imported manservant Coates, whose mouth was exquisitely cooled to keep butter solid. Oh, galling! He, Charles Burdum, was supposed to go down on his knees to Kitty to beg a night in her bed, just as if legally she hadn’t taken solemn vows to be in his bed each and every night. And since by no stretch of the imagination was he a Soames Forsyte, all he could do was to simmer, carefully below boiling-point, and make fresh entries on his grudge list. His wife was
his
, her priorities no longer those of childhood.

The Rector tried.

“Charles, my dear fellow, you are a prince among husbands,” said Mr. Latimer on a visit to Burdum House, “but I fear your knowledge of women in general and of wives in particular is not up to this present task. We exist in the reign of George V, not of Queen Victoria, and men must alter their thinking in the matter of wives. The old laws either have been or will be repealed to give women equal status in marriage. One symptom of change is the increasing ease of divorce for women plaintiffs and the occasional awarding of a post-marital income, though judges resist it. Whatever your private views, you
can’t
voice them to all and sundry. I realise that your words about Edda were the result of nerves, a flash of temper — Edda was an instrument you used to hurt Kitty. However, the bond between my daughters goes back to their birth. What you said was a lie, and Kitty reacted to a lie.”

Gone khaki, the eyes dwelled upon Thomas Latimer in affection mingled with exasperation. “Tom, you construct a sentence as if you parse and analyse it inside your head before you utter a single word of it, and I hear what you say. But it won’t wash. Kitty has got to learn where her loyalties are! Her sisters should be — well, if not a minor aspect of her life, at least a secondary one.”

The Rector gave up. “If you’re still blind about that, Charlie, you won’t win this battle because you can’t. Leave Kitty free to enjoy her sisters, and don’t expect them — or Kitty! — to behave to please
you
.” He put his hat on his head and picked up his stick. “Try to remember that you are the outsider! I don’t
mean that in a derogatory way, but as a segment of time in her life. There is so much that you don’t understand because you weren’t here.”

He couldn’t help it; Charles sneered. “The famous snake at the tea party? Perhaps the real meaning of that incident is that Edda has an affinity for snakes.”

The Reverend Mr. Latimer walked to the door. “Politics,” he said, opening it, “can divide people just as effectively as can religion. Your intransigence, son-in-law, is based in something as meretricious as it is repellent. Good day.”

Feeling as if he had lost this encounter, but equally sure that by rights he should have won it, Charles returned to his work in a sour mood.

Kitty was having Tufts and Grace to tea in the Lilac Suite, quite unaware that her father had invaded Charles’s end of the house.

When Tufts walked in, she took Kitty’s breath away. In her ordinary clothes Tufts looked extremely well turned out yet not important, but there could be no mistaking the significance of this small, impressive figure in her tailored speckledy tweed dress, hair swept up into a loosely waving bun, every movement considered, subtly deliberate. Her mouth had firmed into a flower that still retained a hint of the bud, and the amber eyes were unflinching, so stern and direct. Kitty felt like weeping — why, she didn’t know, save that this full twin had gone so far.

The Widow Olsen breezed in, Queen of the Trelawneys from her stylish home-made black cartwheel hat to her exquisitely
darned only pair of silk stockings. In her widowhood she had found her métier, for what had used to seem silly now seemed noble, and her beauty had improved greatly. The black hair had developed several thin white stripes and fell into a natural obedience; she had taken to darkening her thick lashes with mascara to emphasise the greyness of her eyes, and her lovely mouth was carmined a rich red that drew all eyes to it. Edda had given her the make-up, and she hadn’t been too proud to accept it. Her thinness was plumper where that helped, and she had become a good enough dressmaker to produce highly flattering clothes. No wonder Jack Thurlow still hung around to fix the chook run door and dig the potatoes!

“A mauve decor suits your eyes, Kits,” said Tufts, sitting.

“I wonder why it is,” mused Grace, in touch with ordinary folk, “that snobs persist in calling mauve lilac? Mauve is most definitely a working class colour, whereas lilac is preferred by the more toffee-nosed. Like dress and frock.”

“Bugger that!” said Tufts, thereby proving that superintending encouraged a touch of salt on the tongue. “Has Charlie climbed down at all, Kits?”

“I don’t know — and what’s more, I don’t care.”

“He’s pea-green jealous,” said Grace, gobbling a pikelet loaded with strawberry jam and whipped cream. “Oh, this is good!”

“Eat up, darling girl. Yes, I’m afraid Charlie is jealous.”

“Do you love him?” Tufts asked.

“Yes — and no,” said Kitty.

“I know what the matter is,” said Grace, on another pikelet.

“What?” her sisters chorused.

“You’ve got it into your head that Charlie can’t make you healthy babies.”

Neither Kitty nor Tufts answered; then Tufts poured more tea, admiring the Rockingham china as she did so.

Finally Kitty sighed. “Yes, that is what I think,” she said.

“What does Ned Mason say?” Tufts asked.

“The same old thing. There’s no
physical
reason.”

“Are you scrubbing Charlie in your mind?” Grace asked. “He looks terrible, even without the black eyes.”

“He knows I prefer being with the orphans to being with him, I imagine,” Kitty said.

“There are no tears in your eyes, Kitty.”

“I don’t know what happened, exactly, except that it’s very hard to live with a possessive man. How can he be jealous of my sisters? But he is, and I’m beginning to dislike him for it,” Kitty said, tearless but troubled. “The few married friends I have keep telling me that this is just a down, that marriage is a lot of ups and downs — and I’d believe that, were it not for losing my babies. I can’t honestly explain it, girls.”

“And I daresay she can’t explain it,” said Grace to Tufts as they drove down Catholic Hill. “However, I can.”

Tufts was driving the hospital Model T, and flung a hasty, sideways glance at her sister. “I’m a spinster set in my ways, Grace dear, so you’d better explain it to another ignoramus.”

“It’s simple,” said Grace, out of her fund of knowledge about the married state. “Kitty’s taken against Charlie.”

“Taken against him?”

“Exactly. It happens. Oh, not often, but it does happen. Intimacy’s a funny thing,” Grace went on in the voice of experience, “and neither men nor women have any idea what will happen to them when they live intimately together as a couple. I mean, things like personal habits or invasion of certain privacies — will he let you watch him pee, or will you let him suck your nipple? How does either feel at undressing in front of the other? If he has a haemorrhoid, will he let you have a look? Oh, it goes on and on! And that’s only the body. Did you forget and leave your bloodstained towel lying there? What about politics, eh? And religion? A fondness for the bottle? Men hate wives who cut them down in front of their cronies. Intimacy is a very sticky wicket, Tufts. And sometimes one half of a couple takes against the other half. Outsiders will never know why. Certainly I’ve no idea why Kitty has taken against Charlie. All I know is that she has.” Her tone dropped to a conspiratorial whisper. “One thing I can tell you, probably even Kitty doesn’t honestly know why. Don’t fall for her Charlie-can’t-make-babies line, it’s utter tripe. That’s not why she’s taken against him.”

“Chuck me to the goannas!” said Tufts feebly. “You surprise me, Grace. Isn’t there anything we can do?”

“Just be on hand to pick up the pieces, Tufty, that’s all.”

The federal election called for 19th December 1931 didn’t faze Charles, in that he hadn’t planned to run. Had he stood, Charles would have declared himself an Independent, at liberty to vote how he pleased on each issue. But Kitty wasn’t really a
political wife in the full sense, just a loyal helpmate: oh, for a knowledgeable, politically
committed
helpmate!

So, alone and castigating himself as a donkey, he went to the East Corunda Public School on December 19 to cast his vote.

“Dr. Burdum?”

Halting at the foot of the school steps, he found himself gazing up into a long, faintly horselike face. Its pale eyes were keen to the point of snapping and its bones regular apart from a jutting upper jaw that forced her teeth forward enough to give rise to equine images when describing her. Wearing appallingly tasteless clothes, her skinny body was posed in mute enquiry, reinforced by a notepad and pencil.

“I am Charles Burdum,” he said with a film star smile.

“My name is Dorcas Chandler, and I’m on the staff of the
Corunda Post
. Would you mind if I asked you a few questions?” she said in a light, lilting voice that sat as oddly on her as her name and those contradictory eyes.

“Are you new with the
Post
, Miss Chandler?”

“Yes, this is my first assignment. I was with the
Telegraph
.”

“May I vote first?” he asked, still smiling. “After I’ve done that, I can give you all my attention.”

“Certainly. Shall we meet outside under the blue gum?”

“Certainly!”

The blue gum was a noble tree that had sheltered fifty years of children from the sun in that thin, dappled way Australian trees do, incapable of dense shade; her greenish-black clothes stood out against its sleekly satiny, creamy bark like a lightning scar. An omen? he wondered as he approached Miss Dorcas
Chandler. Is she a portent of my future? Because she’s going to matter, she will blast a bolt of destruction through some part of my life — ideals, hopes, fears, plans — I do not know.

“You were expected to stand for this seat,” she said.

“I did have aspirations, that’s true, Miss Chandler, but this year has seen so much political confusion within the major parties that I ended in deciding the time wasn’t right,” he said easily.

“Oh, I don’t think your motive was
that
cut and dried,” she said, leaning her meagre rump against the tree’s huge trunk.

He blinked. “I beg your pardon?”

“You’re in search of a new political philosophy that will suit Australia, and it’s proving more elusive than you expected,” she said, and winced. “Oh, these wretched insects!”

“Then let us find a seat, Dorcas, but not here amid flying ants. May I call you Dorcas? You will be my friend, won’t you?” he asked, hand under her elbow and aware that in order to do this he had to lift his arm considerably. Miss Dorcas Chandler was six feet tall in bare feet. “Coffee at the Parthenon?”

She tittered. “Delighted, Dr. Burdum.”

“Charles! My name is Charles! Not Charlie, but Charles.”

“Dr. Burdum,” she said with a tiny hoot, “you are not — and never will be! — a Charlie.”

Coffee turned into lunch; Charles didn’t care, so absorbed was he in what this extraordinary woman had to say. At last! Here at last was his political adviser, his helpmate.

When he voiced his fears about Sir Rawson Schiller, she snorted. “A civil servant or diplomat type, Charles, not a
politician. He’s too rich and too well born to head a civil service bureau of any kind, even Foreign Affairs, so he has to approach his dilemma from the left hand, so to speak. I mean, become a minister of government. Then he’s the civil servant’s chief, and can work his changes. But he’s also hampered by the fragility of that approach — I mean, the periods when a party is in opposition and impotent.”

“Isn’t that what I’m implying? That he intends to be the prime minister?” Charles asked blankly.