Elianne (22 page)

‘Yes,’ he replied matter-of-factly, ‘yes I am.’

His eyes were cold now. Remote, emotionless; she had seen such a look before, but never once had it been directed at her.

‘Things have turned out for the best, Ellie,’ he said. ‘It is time you realised that.’ Then he turned abruptly and left the room.

They did not speak of the matter again. He left the following day, and his parting words were a direct order.

‘You must rid yourself of your melancholy, my dear. You have a son to look after.’

Once again his expression was detached, his eyes the eyes of a stranger. He did not smile, he did not kiss her farewell, he did not even wave goodbye as the horse and buggy set off for the train station.

Ellie was left in a state of utter distraction. Had her husband killed her baby? No, no it was not possible. No one was capable of such an atrocity. But he had willed the event. He was glad the child was dead. How was she to live with a man like this? How was she to live at all? She could end her life, drown herself in the dam perhaps. But Big Jim had been right about one thing. She had a son. There was Edward to consider.

In her grief and despair, she turned to the only friends she had: Mela and Pavi Salet.

Mela and Pavi have been my salvation. I cannot write of what happened, not yet, perhaps never. But I owe them both if not my life, then my sanity.

Upon his return, Big Jim was relieved to find his wife in a stronger frame of mind than when he’d left. Indeed despite a certain reserve, which he supposed was to be expected, she was very nearly the Ellie of old. He was pleased that his approach had proved the right one and that she’d come to her senses. He’d been a little callous with her, certainly, but she’d needed to be shocked out of her melancholic state and it had obviously worked. He could be kind to her now.

‘Oh my darling girl, how I’ve missed you,’ he said. Engulfing her in his giant embrace, he lifted her from her feet to whirl her about the living room. The sight of her beauty and the sound of her voice as she’d welcomed him home had filled him with joy: his Ellie was back.

Little Edward, now nearly eighteen months old and ever-eager to exercise his newfound mobility, joined in the game, scampering about, grabbing a fistful of his mother’s skirts as she swirled past, falling over as she swirled on, then picking himself up to repeat the exercise.

‘Yes, yes,’ Jim laughed at the boy’s antics, ‘I’ve missed you too, Edward. Oh it’s so good to be home with my dearest ones.’

He finally released her, breathless and dishevelled, and they sat down to talk while Bertha arrived with the afternoon tea.

‘Was the conference successful?’ she asked, still panting a little.

‘Extremely so,’ he replied. ‘There was a great show of strength, powerful men all, our cause is strongly supported. The Queensland sugar growers are not prepared to lose their Kanakas. We are quite confident the government will be forced to repeal its legislation, or if not, at least to grant a ten-year extension before its enactment.’

‘That will be a relief for many, I should imagine.’

‘It most certainly will.’

‘Thank you, Bertha. I’ll pour.’ Ellie nodded to the housekeeper, who left.

She poured her husband’s tea, added sugar, stirred it and handed him the cup. How strange, she thought, to be serving him tea and having a normal conversation as if everything was as it had once been, as if Beatrice had not died. No, no, rather as if Beatrice had never existed. That is how Jim sees things, she thought. To Jim, Beatrice was no more than a brief, unwelcome visitor who has now ceased to exist. I wonder, had she lived, what his treatment of her would have been. He surely could not have ignored his daughter for the whole of her life. Perhaps they may even have grown close over time . . .

Ellie forced her mind back to the present. She must not torture herself with thoughts of Beatrice and what might have been. She focused instead upon her husband as he forecast the dire consequences that would ensue should Queensland be deprived of Kanaka labour.

That night, when Big Jim came to her bed, Ellie welcomed their union. She would give him children just as she had planned, as many children as she was physically capable of producing. But the children she bore him would not be the salvation of her marriage as she had intended. They would be the salvation of her life. She knew now that there was no form of love she could share with James Durham, even that of common parenthood. She would dissemble though. For the sake of her children she would dissemble even to herself.

Children were already proving a great source of comfort to Ellie. Edward and Malou had become inseparable. The two little boys delighted in each other’s company, and she regularly visited the Salets’ cottage in order that they might play together. Big Jim commented on the fact not long after his return.

‘I am glad to see, Ellie,’ he said, ‘that in my absence you have had the friendship of the Salets to help you through your difficult time.’

‘Yes.’ It was the first reference he’d made to Beatrice’s death, and although Ellie found his attempt to sound sympathetic the height of hypocrisy, she was indeed grateful for the provision of Mela and Pavi in her life. ‘I am thankful to have such friends,’ she said.

Big Jim rightfully took her remark as the personal vote of thanks it was intended to be and was delighted. Their relationship once again on harmonious ground, he would do anything and everything to please his wife.

‘I should like to visit Beatrice’s grave on our trip into town tomorrow,’ she said.

‘Of course,’ he replied after only the briefest hesitation.

It was April and this was to be Ellie’s first social outing since the death of her baby four months previously. They were to attend a garden party at the home of Cedric Tatham, a wealthy entrepreneur with whom Big Jim had had a number of business dealings.

‘The directors of the rum distillery will be present with their wives,’ Jim had told her, ‘and as I am about to invest in the company, I would very much like you by my side. That is, if you feel up to it,’ he’d added as a hasty afterthought.

He’d sensed that she did not at all welcome the prospect, but she’d agreed dutifully and with good grace, so he now supposed that a visit to the child’s grave was a fair exchange. He would not allow such visits to become regular though: they were not healthy and could evoke maudlin bouts. He hoped tomorrow’s wouldn’t. She hadn’t been to the cemetery since the burial.

He stood ten yards or so from the grave and watched her. She presented an attractive but forlorn picture, lace parasol in one hand, posy of flowers in the other as she gazed down at the little headstone. He had physically distanced himself in the pretence that he had no wish to intrude, but he hoped more to serve as a reminder that a pressing engagement awaited them and her visit must be kept brief.

As she bent to place the flowers on the grave, he saw her lips move. It seemed she was saying goodbye. Then after a further moment’s contemplation she turned away. The entire exercise had lasted barely five minutes.

‘Thank you,’ she said, taking his arm as she joined him, and together they walked back to where the horse and buggy was waiting.

Her show of restraint pleased him immensely. And she looked so lovely in her pretty lavender dress. Her choice of lavender, he knew, was evidence she was still in mourning, but no matter – at least she hadn’t insisted upon black. And her hair, pinned up beneath the little straw boater as it was, displayed the elegant line of her neck to perfection. What an asset she is, Big Jim thought proudly, she will certainly serve me well today.

After leaving the cemetery, they drove down the wide thoroughfare of Bourbon Street towards the Tathams’ house, past the Royal Hotel with its majestic balconies, past Buss & Turner’s ever-busy department store and past other businesses that Ellie could swear had not been there on her last trip to town. Bundaberg seemed to grow by the day.

The Tathams’ house, like many, was of Queenslander design, but a little grander than most as befitted Cedric’s status. Broad verandahs overlooked spacious grounds that were perfectly designed for garden parties. Tables with umbrellas and wicker chairs dotted the lawns and there was ample room for the erection of a marquee that comfortably housed twenty to table. The Tathams, a stylish middle-aged English couple, held their annual garden party always in autumn, never spring, which would clash with the crushing season, and despite an air of social occasion the event unashamedly lent itself to the business of the day.

In only several decades Bundaberg had blossomed from little more than a logging camp into a thriving timber town, and had then gone on to become, barely overnight it would seem in historical terms, the prosperous centre of a major sugar-producing region. A number of entrepreneurs had emerged during this massive boom, clever men who recognised and seized the opportunities that abounded. One such was Cedric Tatham. A prominent citizen and member of the Bundaberg Municipal Council, there was very little local commerce in which Cedric was not involved and very few major businesses that had not benefited from his investment, silent or otherwise.

Cedric’s garden parties were therefore specifically designed for the purposes of mixing and mingling. Along with wishing to consolidate his place in the town’s hierarchy, Cedric Tatham firmly believed that business conducted on a social level was expedient for all concerned. Besides, his wife very much enjoyed playing hostess.

Contrary to Ellie’s expectations, the garden party did not prove a gruelling affair, although in its early stages, it augured to be all that she had feared.

‘My goodness gracious, just look at them,’ Margaret Tatham said with a flippant wave of her hand, ‘you’d swear, would you not, that our husbands are solving the gravest problems the world has to offer.’

Margaret Tatham was considered by many the social doyen of Bundaberg; the several women with her at the table on the verandah laughed as they followed her gaze. Across the expanse of landscaped lawn and garden, their husbands were gathered with a number of others having pre-luncheon drinks and the conversation was clearly of the most intense nature.

Seated beside Margaret, Ellie dredged up a smile, but she couldn’t bring herself to laugh. What, she wondered, would Jim think if he could hear himself so belittled by these empty-headed women? Jim of course would not care in the least, but somehow she did. She thought it disloyal of women to deride their husbands. She wished as always that she could join in the men’s conversation, which was bound to be interesting. Particularly today, for she knew of the business involved.

While the wives chatted on, Ellie continued to watch their men. Jim and Cedric Tatham were in discussion with Frederic Buss, the sugar producer and highly successful entrepreneur who had helped initiate, among his many other enterprises, the Bundaberg Distilling Company. With them were several of the major mill owners who also served as directors of the company. Jim had confessed to her his lost opportunity in not joining forces with the well-established sugar-mill owners who had formed the company five years previously. He’d agreed with them at the time that a distillery could well prove profitable and that it would certainly solve the problem of what to do with the volume of molasses waste left after the sugar’s extraction, but his own mill had been in a younger stage of development and he’d not had the finance available for further investment. Things were very different these days. A great deal had changed over the past five years. Elianne was now a highly productive mill and the Bundaberg Distillery, after only two years of rum production, was showing a profit. Expansion was the word on everyone’s lips. Expansion was the reason behind Cedric Tatham’s garden party.

As Ellie distractedly watched the men, she didn’t realise that she herself was being watched, and at close quarters.

Margaret Tatham leant in to her. ‘We’re prattling on rather, aren’t we?’ she murmured in Ellie’s ear.

Ellie gave a guilty start. Had she seemed rude? She must have. ‘I’m so sorry –’ she started to reply, but Margaret continued, her voice still a murmur.

‘We’re all pretending to be jolly because we don’t know what to say to you.’

Ellie looked into the matronly face of her hostess. It was a face whose expression she had always seen as superficial, yet now in the woman’s eyes was such compassion and depth of understanding she found she could not look away.

‘I hope you will forgive my intrusion, Ellie,’ the older woman said quietly, ‘but I wish to offer you my deepest sympathy. Oh my dear, how my heart does go out to you.’ Margaret Tatham had suffered the loss of two children in the earlier years of her marriage, one at birth and the other at three years of age. She remembered the dreadful months afterwards and was very sad to see another woman in the throes of that grief.

Ellie couldn’t help herself. Confronted by such naked sincerity, she could not stop tears springing to her eyes. She blinked them back fiercely: she must not cry here.

The chatter around the table had gradually died down. Margaret’s words had not been audible to the others, but her communication had been quite clear and the women were now looking at Ellie, each of them kindly, each concerned.

‘We were so saddened to hear the news, Ellie,’ one said. She was younger than her companions. Her name was Elizabeth. She had given birth to a stillborn three years previously.

‘If there is anything we can do . . .’ said another.

The tears suddenly flowed freely, Ellie stemming them as best she could with the linen handkerchief Margaret handed her.

‘Thank you,’ she said, ‘you’re very kind, thank you.’ Caring though the women were, she wished they would stop; she wished the subject of Beatrice had not arisen. ‘Oh dear, I’m making a spectacle of myself,’ she said with a nervous glance in her husband’s direction. Jim would certainly not approve of her weeping in public. She made as if to rise from the table, but Margaret took her hand preventing her.

‘You’re not making a spectacle of yourself at all, my dear.’ Margaret had noticed the apprehensive look Ellie had cast at her husband. ‘You are among friends.’ Another nervous look, she now noted: Big Jim Durham was clearly insensitive to the extent of his wife’s suffering. The poor girl has been marooned out there on that remote plantation with no one to turn to, Margaret thought.