Elianne (21 page)

‘My daughter is deformed.’ Big Jim’s voice was cold and his rage contained, which if anything made him even more frightening. ‘You said “abnormality” Doctor.
Abnormality
is not
healthy.
You said she would live a “normal life”. A life with physical disfigurement and speech impairment is not
normal
, my friend –’

‘Stop it, Jim,’ Ellie interrupted, ‘stop it, I beg you. Doctor Benson is hardly responsible for the defect that has been inflicted upon poor little Beatrice.’

Beatrice
. So the child already had a name. ‘And how do you feel about this
defect
that has been inflicted upon your daughter, Ellie?’

Ellie looked down at the baby in her arms. She had had two hours to adjust to the sight of the deformity, two hours during which she had examined every perfect little finger and every perfect little toe and had felt the fierce clasp of her daughter’s tiny hand. ‘I shall love her all the more for it,’ she said.

‘I see.’ Jim nodded briskly to the woman standing by the bedside. ‘Well, I shall leave you in the good hands of Mrs Kearn,’ he said, then to Alfred Benson, ‘I will arrange a driver and buggy to take you to the punt, Doctor, and you will invoice me as agreed, yes?’

‘Of course, Mr Durham. Mrs Kearn will visit daily over the next week or so to check on the child’s progress, and should there appear any problems, do send word.’

‘Yes, yes.’

‘Where are you going?’ Ellie asked as he turned to leave.

‘To have lunch, my dear,’ he replied, ‘after which I shall return to the mill. As I’m sure you’re aware, Doctor,’ he said, turning to Alfred, ‘with a further month of the crushing season ahead of us, we are extremely busy.’

‘Yes indeed,’ Alfred replied, relieved to no longer be the focus of the man’s fury.

For the remainder of the crushing season, Big Jim successfully avoided the sight of his latest offspring. He distracted himself by toiling long hours at the mill, and by roaming the plantation, checking on the teams of cane cutters and field workers, although the overseers appointed to the task were more than competent. Over-work and fatigue and the gnawing knowledge of exactly what it was he was avoiding found him constantly irritable. Workers lived in fear of the Boss’s unexpected appearance.

‘Get up, you lazy bastards,’ he screamed on one occasion when he came upon a team of six Kanaka cane cutters taking a well-earned break. ‘What do you think I pay you for?’ Grasping a man by the collar of his heavy work shirt with one hand and his belt with the other, Big Jim picked him up bodily, lifted him above his head, and hurled him into the wall of uncut cane a full five yards away. The man fell to the ground with an ominous crack of bone. ‘Work, you black bastards, work,’ Big Jim yelled, whirling on the others who’d already jumped to their feet. He stormed off, leaving the team thrashing away with their cane knives in a frenzy of labour until, assured he was gone, they could tend to their friend’s broken arm. Word quickly got about after that. ‘Watch out for the Boss,’ they warned each other.

The delaying tactics did not ultimately work in Big Jim’s favour, however. With the crushing over, the slack season followed and he could no longer avoid his home and the baby his wife so doted upon.

Ellie appeared to have no idea that the sight of her precious daughter was repulsive to him. She has become inured to her child’s deformity, he thought. He found it disgusting that a woman of Ellie’s beauty should dote on something so grotesque. The fact bewildered him. Why nurture such a creature? he thought. The child will grow to look ugly, she will grow to sound ugly, what value will she have to herself or anyone else? What value does any woman have without at least some shred of comeliness?

It was early one morning in mid-December that Ellie discovered little Beatrice dead in her cot. Through habit, she awoke at dawn and rose to feed the child, wondering why Beatrice herself was not already awake and demanding to be fed. At first the baby appeared to be sleeping peacefully, but the moment Ellie picked her up she knew. Her demented wail echoed throughout the house.

Big Jim appeared instantly from the bedroom across the hall. They slept in separate rooms while she was breast-feeding.

‘What is it?’ he asked, concerned to see his wife on her knees on the floor, the child cradled in her arms, frantically rocking it from side to side. ‘What’s happened?’ he demanded.

‘She’s not breathing,’ Ellie screamed hysterically, ‘she’s not breathing, she’s not breathing,’ and she rocked the baby’s body back and forth ever more fiercely as if the sheer force of movement might put breath back into its lifeless form.

As Big Jim knelt beside her, another figure appeared at the open door, the housekeeper, awakened by her mistress’s screams, tying the cord of her dressing gown and watching with horror.

Jim clasped his wife firmly by the shoulders. ‘Stop it, Ellie,’ he ordered, ‘stop it,’ and obediently she halted her frenzied rocking. He took the baby from her, Ellie relinquishing it freely.

‘Bring her back, Jim! Bring her back,’ she said frantically, desperately, over and over. ‘Bring her back. Bring her back.’

He looked at the child, who was quite clearly dead. ‘I can’t Ellie. She’s gone.’

Taking her arm, Jim tried to assist her to her feet, but Ellie would have none of it. ‘No, no,’ she said, ‘no, no,’ and reaching out she snatched the baby from him, hugging the body close, sobbing now, hysteria replaced by anguish as her mind was forced to acknowledge the inescapable truth.

Jim stood. He signalled the housekeeper, who came forward and gently coaxed her mistress to rise.

‘Come along, Mrs Ellie,’ Bertha said, ‘come along and sit down.’

Ellie stood, allowing herself to be led to a chair, where she sat cradling little Beatrice.

‘What happened?’ she asked. ‘What went wrong?’ She looked up at her husband and the housekeeper, her eyes begging answers. ‘I fed her only three hours ago. She was all right then. What happened? What did I do wrong?’

‘You did nothing wrong, Ellie,’ Jim said comfortingly, ‘she just died in her sleep. It’s not your fault.’

‘Oh yes, it is. It
is
my fault, it has to be.’ She kissed the baby’s cold little face. ‘Oh my poor darling, how did this happen, what have I done?’

The housekeeper, too, tried to comfort her distraught mistress. ‘It’s a tragedy, Mrs Ellie,’ Bertha said, ‘but you mustn’t hold yourself to blame.’

‘But I do,’ Ellie wept, ‘I do, I do.’

Nothing either could say would convince her she was blameless, and eventually Big Jim sent a man to fetch the doctor.

‘It is not healthy you should lay blame upon yourself in this manner, Ellie,’ he said stringently, as if he were speaking to a wayward child. ‘The doctor will inform you I’m sure that there was nothing you could have done to save the baby.’

Alfred Benson arrived six hours later and in some trepidation. He’d been told the news en route and was unsure of what treatment he might expect from James Durham. He was relieved by the cordiality of his reception.

‘Thank you for coming, Doctor Benson,’ Big Jim said, ‘I’m most grateful. Do please forgive me for calling you away with such urgency, but my wife is convinced she is responsible for the child’s death and is driving herself to distraction. I am hoping you can help.’

‘Of course, Mr Durham.’

Jim ushered the doctor through to where Ellie lay curled up on the bed, her dead baby still cuddled to her breast. She would allow no one to take Beatrice from her – no one until Alfred Benson that is.

‘I should like to examine little Beatrice, if I may,’ Alfred said, and Ellie finally relinquished her child.

She watched as the doctor made his examination. At first she was quiet, but the silence seemed more than she could bear and she soon became agitated.

‘I fed her twice during the night,’ she said. ‘I didn’t think there was anything wrong. She was making snuffling noises, but she always did that. She was swallowing all right; she didn’t choke or gag. I don’t know what I did wrong, Doctor. I don’t know what I did wrong.’

‘You did nothing wrong, Mrs Durham,’ Alfred Benson assured her. ‘There is no obstruction in the baby’s windpipe, no undue swelling in the throat, nothing that would present a possible cause for asphyxiation.’

‘Then what happened?’

‘Sadly we will never know. Such events have occurred in the past and they appear inexplicable. For no apparent reason, a baby can simply stop breathing and suffocate in its sleep. This would appear to be the case with little Beatrice, I’m afraid. Under no circumstances must you feel in any way responsible.’

Jim was delighted that the doctor’s report had proved him correct. ‘You see, my dear, I was right,’ he said, ‘the baby died in her sleep. There was nothing you could have done.’ Good, he thought, Ellie was absolved of guilt. They could get on with their lives now.

But Ellie could not get on with her life. She no longer blamed herself, it was true, but she was inconsolable in her grief. Little Beatrice was laid to rest in Bundaberg Cemetery and, in the weeks that followed, Ellie remained listless, distracted. Sometimes she was maudlin, sometimes moody and irritable; at no time was she the Ellie of old.

Big Jim found it all very tiresome. He tried cheering her up with reports of the new house, which was nearing completion, but she showed no interest, and when he attempted to play the nurturing husband he was rebuffed.

‘You have a lot to be thankful for, Ellie,’ he would say, ‘you have a healthy son –’

Her reply would bounce back as an accusation. ‘If Beatrice had been a boy you’d be grieving her loss,’ she’d say.

After several such responses Jim ceased his nurturing attempts.

Christmas came and went, and then the whole of January, by which time he’d had enough. The planters’ conference in Townsville was the perfect excuse, he decided. After the conference he’d stay up north for a month or so and allow her to grieve on her own. When he got back she’d hopefully be over the worst of it.

‘I regret having to leave you at this crucial time, my dear,’ he said, ‘but I’m afraid my trip north is unavoidable: the planters’ conference in Townsville is of great importance to us all.’ Her indifference irritated him. She might at least have had the courtesy to show some interest in his business concerns.

‘You are possibly not aware, Ellie,’ he said, ‘indeed it is hardly a woman’s place to be so informed, but the government passed legislation some time ago to stop the importation of Kanaka labour by 1890. A year, which I might point out,’ he added drily, ‘is currently upon us. The same government also denies planters the right to import Indian coolies for fear of upsetting the British Colonial Government. The position is untenable.’

She remained staring into space, which annoyed him even further.

‘Do you not realise the significance of what I am saying?’ he continued testily. ‘Some sugar growers in the north are actually contemplating removing their mills to the Northern Territory if a supply of coolie labour can be guaranteed them there. These rulings will have an immense impact upon our entire industry. It is imperative we fight for the continuation of the Kanaka labour system.’

He had finally gained her attention, what little she afforded him anyway, and for what little it was worth.

‘Then fight,’ she said, ‘go to your conference. But I know the real reason you’re leaving: you want to get away from me, you’re tired of my grief.’

What could he say? In essence she was right, although her petulance was irksome. ‘I can assure you,’ he said stiffly, ‘that the conference is of vast importance . . .’

But she wasn’t listening. Staring once again into space, she’d become maudlin. ‘What would you know of grief?’ she said. ‘You never loved Beatrice. You never held her in your arms. You don’t even care that she’s dead.’

What a stupid remark, he thought. Of course he didn’t care. He’d felt no remorse at all as he’d smothered the child. His only fear had been Ellie herself as he’d watched her through the mosquito netting that shrouded the four-poster. He’d had his lie at the ready. If she were to awaken he would pretend he’d heard the baby cry and had come to its assistance. But she hadn’t awakened.

‘If Beatrice had been a boy you’d care,’ Ellie said. ‘If Beatrice had been a boy you’d –’

‘You’re wrong, I would not.’ He looked at her, wallowing in her world of self-pity, and all he could feel was contempt. ‘I would care nothing for a boy with a deformity like that,’ he said coldly. ‘Any child with such a deformity is better off dead.’

Ellie was shocked from her torpor. His chilling words broke through the grief that had consumed her for weeks and, like pieces of a jigsaw puzzle thoughts and images flooded through her mind to make a hideous connection. She remembered his reaction upon first seeing the baby, the way he’d avoided the house, how he’d ignored little Beatrice’s presence as if willing her not to be there. Never once had he held her. Never once, she now realised, had he even uttered her name.

‘What have you done?’ she said her voice barely a whisper. Why, she wondered in horror, had such a possibility not occurred to her? She’d been so absorbed in her baby that she’d failed to read the signs. ‘In God’s name what have you done?’

‘What have I done?’ Big Jim asked in all innocence. He was grateful that he’d garnered her attention at long last. What have I
done
?
Why, an act of kindness. I’ve put a maimed creature out of its misery. The child should have been destroyed at birth, before the mother was allowed to form an attachment. ‘I don’t understand you, Ellie. What is it exactly that you’re asking?’ He rather enjoyed making her say it out loud.

‘You killed her.’ She could not believe the words even as she said them. ‘You killed my baby.’

His smile was indulgent. ‘Now, now, you’re being silly, silly and fanciful – your imagination is working overtime. You heard what the doctor said. Sad though it is, such deaths are not uncommon.’

Ellie felt confused. What was she to think? What was she to believe? He didn’t appear in the least confronted by her accusation and yet . . .

‘You’re glad Beatrice is dead, aren’t you?’ she said.