Bittersweet (42 page)

“She demanded a contract,” he said.

“Then make sure it’s craftily worded. If she’s as clever as you say, she’ll spot the relevant clauses, but she can’t very well object, can she?” Kitty said, enjoying herself. “Your ignorance and her knowledge endow her with the ability to play on your weaknesses. It’s a pity that you had to wait so long to experience the effect of women at the centre of your life, but now that women are in it, be prepared for women’s tricks.” She laughed. “There! That’s sincerely meant, Charlie.
Learn!
”

And the oddest thing about that advice, Charles thought, is that it says Kitty is finished with me in her soul. What
did
I do? It’s far more than Edda.

He turned to Tufts. “I’m taking Cynthia Norman out of the hospital, Tufts. From now on she’ll be working purely as private secretary to Charles Burdum Esquire, not Dr. Charles Burdum. I am building more office space onto this house. And you’re right about doing my dirty work. I couldn’t run Corunda Base without you. Therefore you are going to choose the secretary who takes Cynthia’s place. She’ll be yours far more than mine. By 1934 I won’t be attached to the hospital at all. You graduate at the end of this year, and your accountancy qualifications will follow very quickly afterward.”

“Thank you,” said Tufts, rather winded. Had he come in tonight with all this already decided, or was he thinking on his feet? Liam will be sorry to lose him, but I don’t feel a qualm.

“Dinner is ready,” said Kitty, rising. “How extraordinary! Burdum House used to be an echoing mausoleum, but I’ll grant you this, Charlie, you’ve devised a way to fill it.”

B
urdum House was becoming something of a village; in front of it and, so to speak, down a level, a row of cottages had appeared. Each stood in plenty of ground, was two-storeyed, had three bedrooms, a bathroom upstairs and a second toilet down, and its own garage. To Kitty it seemed a long-term project, since four cottages were in existence before the first tenant, Coates, was more than a wistful wish for a valet. Next to move in was Cynthia Norman — two down, two to go, thought Kitty.

Then, hard on Cynthia’s heels, came Dorcas Chandler. To live in one of these desirable residences would have suited Mrs. Mary Simmons, who was Kitty’s housekeeper, but when she had asked him for this favour well before Coates, Charles had said a firm no. The cottages were for his employees. Mrs. Simmons was dowered with a car to pick her up from her (rented) home and deposit her back there; that was quite generous enough. Had he only paused to set himself aside, Charles would have understood that decisions of this kind contributed greatly to his wife’s taking against him, for she saw them as actions aimed at demonstrating
her inferior status. He was so rich! An Englishman, he also knew perfectly well that housekeepers “lived in”. So his valet lived in and his secretary lived in, but his housekeeper, who answered to his wife, lived out. His secretary had a car in Charlie’s gift; so too, it turned out, did Miss Dorcas Chandler.

“You have to stop this, Kitty,” said the Reverend Latimer on a visit, and getting an earful of these domestic biases. “I approve of your working at the orphanage because it takes you out of yourself, but I do not approve of manufacturing ills where none should exist. Has Mrs. Simmons complained to you?”

“No,” said Kitty, bewildered, “but that doesn’t make Charlie’s discrimination more praiseworthy.”

“Rubbish! It’s you who feels discriminated against, not Mrs. Simmons. My child, there is no need for this! Whether you like it or not, Charles is at liberty to spend his income how he pleases. I find his actions sensible — he accommodates those he may need at a moment’s notice. Think, Kitty, think! Would you like to be so far in someone’s power? When you were a nurse, you lived in for the sake of the hospital, which could summon you back to work without searching the district for you. I suspect Mrs. Simmons is very happy with her present arrangement — she doesn’t live under her employer’s nose, but she does get driven to and from work, as there is no public transport.”

Because in all save Charlie she was a fair and just person, Kitty acknowledged the truth in her father’s words, and simmered down. She was also dying to meet the gangling horsey skeleton.

Miss Chandler had been given the best of the four cottages, she had already noticed; on the far end of the row, it alone had its
own entrance off the street, and was hidden from its neighbour, still vacant, by a hedge of a fast-growing tree called a fiddle-wood. Its decor was blandly beige, but its furniture was better quality and its rainwater tank that collected from its roof was a ten-thousand gallon one, very generous for a sole occupant. It also had its own septic system, whereas the others were linked together. Hmmm … Miss Chandler was very definitely important to Charlie, no doubt about that, thought Kitty.

The proper thing to do, she decided, was to invite the new tenant of Burdum Row to morning tea on a date of her choosing, as Kitty’s graceful letter said when Miss Chandler picked it up off the hallway floor. An equally graceful reply named the day after moving in, as Dr. Burdum wouldn’t need her until noon.

Naturally Dorcas Chandler knew that her employer’s wife was commonly held one of the most beautiful women anywhere, but she hadn’t really been ready for Kitty’s striking colouring, the flaxen-blonde hair too transparent to call gold, the icy brows and lashes, the chiselled bones, the dimples, the amazing eyes, the trim yet voluptuous body.
Of course
he had to have her! She contributed to his myth, and Charles Burdum was a man very busy constructing a history of himself that future chroniclers of Australia would turn into a myth. Beautifully dressed too, in fine cotton suitable for the time of day, her hair cut shorter than the new fashion because gamine became her, no jewellery save a glorious diamond wedding pair — very interesting grist to Miss Chandler’s mill, after so many years of society events. The only thing wrong with Mrs. Burdum was her nature, inclined
to domestic retirement, as was true of so many wives of men in politics. No, Mrs. Burdum wasn’t a perfect politician’s wife.

On Kitty’s part, she found herself liking Miss Chandler, who was far from an object of pity. This, Kitty divined, was a brilliant woman of driving ambition who was sensible enough not to kick at the restraints her sex made inevitable; knowing she herself could never be prime minister, she would work with mind, heart and soul to be the power behind a prime minister. And in Charlie she had found the right man.

They had plenty to talk about.

“If I am to advise Charles properly,” Dorcas said once they had abandoned last names and pretences, “then I must know about his family and personal connections within Corunda. It won’t be prurient interest, but it will be probing.”

“Probe away,” said Kitty blithely, offering pikelets, jam and cream. “Eat up, we have to get some weight on you — not a lot, about the same as my sister Edda, who is very tall, slender and graceful. Charlie hates dowdy women, but he’s probably told you that already.”

The slightly leathery skin went pink. “As a matter of fact, he has. It will be much easier on a good income.”

“You don’t make your own clothes?”

Dorcas looked blank. “No.”

“Edda always did, and magnificently, so she always looked wonderful.” Remembering the debate with Tufts as to whether this woman was being drained by a human leech, and anxious to help her, Kitty took a pad from a side table and wrote on it. “This is my dressmaker, Pauline O’Brien. She’s in Edda’s league,
but her charges are quite modest — the Depression means she’s lost a lot of clients and is grateful for new ones. She’s good on style and she’ll shop for materials for you honestly. I used to buy all my clothes in Sydney, but since I married, Pauline is who I need.”

The wife’s intentions, thought Dorcas, are pristine; she
wants
to see me succeed in this job! Not a scrap of jealousy or self-interest — or is it that she sees herself negated by any public exposure? I can’t ask her about the miscarriages, but she has scars, and she
was
a children’s nurse. Now she’s a volunteer at the orphanage. I can make capital out of that, but she won’t like it. A private person, Kitty Burdum.

“I’d love to see Lady Schiller,” Dorcas said.

Kitty laughed. “No chance of that! She’s a medical student in Melbourne, and about as happy as any human being can be. Her gender denied her Medicine, now she can have it thanks to Rawson.”

“You like him?”

“Very much. He’s made my sister happy. That’s all any of the Rector’s daughters asks, that her sisters be happy.”

“Would Grace mind talking to me? And Heather?”

“Grace would talk the leg off an iron pot. Tufts is harder to get on side, but she’ll do it for Charlie.”

“Tufts? Is that a nickname?”

“Yes, almost as old as we are.”

“How did she get it?” Dorcas asked.

“A nanny who was fascinated by our forwardness when we were about a year old. I think a part of the forwardness was
due to Grace and Edda, only twenty months older than us. We worshipped them! But it was so hard to say Heather! Our infant tongues tripped on it constantly. Anyway, the Nanny had the bright idea of bringing in a kitten — Kitty from Katherine — and a sprig of heather. Trying to explain, she said that heather grew in tufts, and went on to describe what a tuft was. I found it much easier to say tufts than heather, and started calling Tufts Tufts. The next thing, everybody was calling her Tufts, even Daddy.”

“Unusual,” said Dorcas.

“How extraordinary!” Kitty exclaimed with a sigh. “I had quite forgotten how Tufts became Tufts.”

“Nicknames usually point up some character trait in their subjects,” said Dorcas, veering into politics. “Bismarck was the Iron Chancellor, the Duke of Wellington was Old Hooky, Louis XIV was the Sun King, Queen Elizabeth was the Virgin Queen, and the Roman nobleman actually tacked his nickname onto his family name as a mark of distinction, even if it meant idiotic or crooked.”

The big violet-blue eyes were staring at her, slightly glazed. “You’re ideal for Charlie,” Kitty said. “He’d lap that up.” She looked suddenly urgent, intense. “Dorcas, you reported on fashion for newspapers, so you must know a lot about it. Promise me that you’ll smarten yourself up for Charlie, please!”

“A good income will make all the difference,” Dorcas repeated.

“Have you heavy drains on your purse?”

“My parents.”

“No one else?”

The voice sharpened. “What do you mean?”

“A jobless brother? A boyfriend?”

The cheeks were dull crimson. “That is my own business.”

“And I should mind mine? But don’t you understand, my dear, that in coming on to Charlie’s private staff, you’ve virtually made your business his? I know him, and I can tell you that he’s very possessive. The size of your salary and its perquisites should tell you that you’ve been bought. Charlie is a millionaire. Such men tend to view human beings as property bought and paid for. I’m not decrying his nobility of nature or the fineness of his character — even in 1932, with hundreds of thousands of men out of work, he’s managed to keep Corunda more prosperous than most places, and he throws all of himself, including a very big heart, into everything he does. But there is a tiny bit of Soames Forsyte in him for all that — he’s a man of property,” said Kitty.

To which Dorcas Chandler made no reply.

And that, thought Kitty, is as much as I can do for that poor woman, who
does
harbour a secret, a secret that costs her money. If she can’t confide it to Charlie, then it carries the seed of her destruction with it, and she knows that all too well. The contract clauses will have told her that he’s hedged himself against embarrassing disclosures, debts incurred without his consent or knowledge, a multitude of vague implications that, if not contractually tackled, might lead to things like blackmail. But she had signed the contract without a murmur. Poor woman!

Kitty’s own life had steadied down into a routine that saw her at the orphanage most days, but home in time to spend the evenings with Charles, who hadn’t asked to spend a night in her bed. Perhaps, she thought as Dorcas Chandler eased her way into his life, he too had given up the ghost of his marriage? Not that she thought him interested in Dorcas, bought and paid for; just that he was more comfortable conversing with Dorcas. Which, as 1932 pressed on, led to his asking Kitty if she minded Dorcas for dinner some nights.

“An excellent idea!” Kitty said at once. “Who knows? I might learn something too. Children are a delight, but the level of conversation is pretty basic.”

Dorcas’s appearance was improving; the black outfits so old they had gone green had vanished, and she had either put on some weight, or the better clothes displayed her figure better. She was wearing face powder, lipstick and a touch of rouge, and had gone to a salon to have her hair cut and marcelled in the French fashion. No Hollywood film studio would ever offer her a contract, but she now looked more smartly professional.

What amazed Kitty was the degree of Dorcas’s and Charlie’s passion for politics. Though Charlie had many duties that took him to the hospital or other Corunda destinations, he still managed to spend a lot of his days with Dorcas, yet the moment she arrived for pre-dinner drinks, he was into politics again, and wanted to talk about nothing else until Dorcas went back to Burdum Row; sometimes he was so immersed in a theory that he would escort her just to keep the discussion going.

Admittedly the times provoked political passion, with rival theories for economic recovery fuelling not only the parties, but factions within each party. After the landslide victory of Joe Lyons and the United Australia Party that Christmas of 1931, it might have been expected that the wrangling would cease, but not all U.A.P. parliamentarians were in favour of London’s insistence on retrenchment. Lyons and his ruling cadre were, so the misery went on. When Jack Lang refused a second time to pay interest on the state’s loans until times were better, Lyons and the federal government paid up. But this time Canberra insisted on being paid back. Jack Lang refused to pay up or permit his funds to be garnished. Feelings ran so high that the situation culminated in Lang’s attempting to barricade the New South Wales Treasury — it was states’ rights against central power with a vengeance.

On 13th May 1932, Lang’s world fell apart when the Governor of New South Wales, Sir Philip Game, dismissed J.T. Lang and his party from office as incapable of governing responsibly. Fed up with the turmoil, New South Welshmen and women voted in a conservative government, and resistance to retrenchment perished, though its opponents still hated its every measure.

To this and much more Kitty was forced to listen each time Dorcas came to dinner, more and more often as Charles leaned on her opinions more heavily. It wasn’t that Kitty was indifferent, or unconcerned, or shallow; simply, that since her passions were not engaged, she heard the talk the way a sober person hears two drunks — it went around and around in the same eternal rut.
If something new happened, she was galvanised, but something new didn’t even happen once a week; more likely, once a month, which mean twenty-nine or thirty days of repetition, repetition, repetition. By the end of Jack Lang, Kitty wondered how much more political conversation she could take without jumping up and screaming “Shut up! Shut up! SHUT UP!”

And winter was here again, snow clouds over the Great Divide, the freezing Antarctic winds stripping deciduous trees bare, and a blue misery in Kitty’s heart that she couldn’t seem to blow an atom of warmth into. Her husband was happy despite his lack of conjugal pleasures because he was, withal, a man who didn’t live for those. He lived for politics, and there was no doubt that when the country next went to the federal election booths, he would be standing as an Independent. All he had really needed was a Dorcas.